I see monsters
by Snark-bait
Summary: It’s the End of the World, as they know it. House/Cam. Warning: Character Death Everywhere. Apocalpyptic/Plague
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not Mine. All of the characters belong to Fox

I see monsters

Chapter One

House

The keys for the soda machine were around here somewhere, he thought, they had to be.

The fourth floor was a tube of shadow and flickering light; the back-up generator was only strong enough to keep the first, second and third floor in full illumination. He had a thick, rubber flashlight jammed into his mouth. He'd found it in the trunk of Wilson's car. The light was aimed on his long, dirty fingers and they were working to pick the storage cupboard lock. His makeshift key was two straightened paper clips. He'd been at it so long now his fingers had started to bleed a little. If only his mind would join in on the task, he meandered, mentally, and wasn't that the problem? his mind was a drifting sail boat on a misty lake – just rolling and bobbing.

Maybe his mind was just trying to help block out the smell for him, wandering here and there so he didn't focus too completely on that stench.

The smell was coming from inside the room he was trying to get into; he was clear on that point. That smell worried him. It was not the smell of death - he'd gotten used to that over the years. He could handle puss and the smell of infected intestines and exposed organs. The smell of the virus was like all of those things combined after they'd been baked in an August heat wave. The virus had a smell like nothing else on Earth. It hung around the hospital and jumped on House's gag reflex whenever he got the faintest whiff of it.

He was half scared out of his mind over what he might find behind the door, but he needed to get inside the room.

Survival was a stronger motivator than irrational fear. He needed the keys to the soda machines and he'd looked everywhere for them. The janitor would have them and House had searched the bodies - so many bodies - yet he hadn't been able to find Lou. Now the water wasn't running in the building anymore and he couldn't leave the teaching hospital – not yet. The cafeteria had been poorly stocked with food and water and those meagre supplies had ran out in the first week of the sick arriving there.

It had taken longer than two weeks but less than a month. He wasn't completely sure - his sense of certainty had been one of the first things to leave him. The very concept of time had taken on a fuzzy sort of haze, like that of a childhood memory, you could sort of remember but the edges weren't so clearly defined and there wasn't enough to hold onto. Time would never apply to life on Earth again. Not the way it once had. The virus had seen to that too, in its own way. It had taken longer than two weeks for everyone to be gone. Gone. Okay, gone wasn't quite the right word, they were all still here, physically. In had taken less than a month for everyone to die. The one cruel twist the virus had for him? a natural resistance.

'Of all the people, in all the world' his mind modified the famous line. Bogie had been drawling it over and over. It made him feel hysterical every time he thought of it but it was an intrusive thought - a trick he played on himself– it was hard to stop. And hadn't it always been? Hadn't he always had a hard time stopping before he went too far?

There was no one left to torture, so he was torturing himself.

He'd tried to stop thinking about that one in a million chance. He'd had plenty of opiate assistance in the first week on his own. Slumped behind the desk in his office - hospital blankets piled on top of him, that opiate fug to blur and smudge the horror out. The end of the world was an all you could eat Vicodin buffet, where you could have more than you'd ever need and then some, but he couldn't quite take enough to go into a sleep he wouldn't wake up from.

And then he'd wanted to feel sober, he needed to dig the holes. So he'd done that, and put his friends in them, and now he was back to a normal pain killing dose. Still following the parameters Wilson had sort of set out for him and he'd sort of avoided and abused.

Wilson. House swallowed and pushed the name away from him. He set it adrift on that misty lake inside his head and hoped it wouldn't come back. It wasn't easy. It was like being told not to think of orange penguins. If you tried not to it was all you could think about. He got a sense of a particular orange penguin standing just behind him, with his hands on his hips, giving him unhelpful tips on how to pick _the damn lock_.

'What are you doing, House? that'll never work. You should just go. Leave. She's not coming back. No one is coming. You're the last one.'

"You're dead." House said, no, whimpered. He ran a dirty hand over his eyes and shook his head.

'And you're hallucinating because you've taken too much Vicodin,' Wilson's voice chastised. 'House, you'll die too if you don't get out of here. Go to New York. Maybe it didn't get that far.'

House stopped to check and see if Wilson really was behind him, almost hoping, but of course he wasn't. He'd buried Wilson days ago. Wilson was in the ground. House shivered and continued to pick the lock. The voice piped up again and he bit down on his lip, hard, until he drew blood and the pain blocked Wilson's voice - coming from his own exhausted mind - out.

_Why him?_ Why an asshole like him? Why was he resistant and yet so many others gone? Maybe _because _he was an asshole, perhaps; this was certainly worse than death. God did exist after all and he was PISSED.

House had stayed at the hospital. He'd been camping in his office for three weeks. He'd buried his best friends, side by side, in the small garden in front of Cuddy's office two days ago. Now he wasn't entirely sure what he should do next.

He needed to leave New Jersey; he knew that for sure but go where? No he had to wait just in case. He had to wait just in case _she_ came back.

She'd promised and if there was one thing he could hold onto that might just be real, it was that Allison Cameron would keep her promise.

House continued to pick the lock.

Cameron

It had taken her a week to get there from The New Jersey Centre for Disease Control.

House was staring at her very strangely, eyes wide, but slightly vacant. Not a critical look like she was used to, when he was trying to figure her out and turning all of her little quirks over in his mind. No, she couldn't pin-point _this_ look. What was it? Wait, maybe she could. His look was the look of someone trying to work out if what he was looking at was real.

"Cameron?" House's voice had never sounded so unsure: it was childlike and scared. That fear brushed up against her own fear and hugged and warmed and nuzzled it until it made her stomach bob like his Adam's apple when he swallowed to get the moisture back into his mouth.

He'd been standing just outside his office when she'd found him. She'd been calling for what felt like hours but had probably been much less than. He looked a little stoned, but that was a sight for sore eyes today. She went to him and hugged him tightly to her and then closed her eyes. He didn't hug her back and she was glad that he didn't. Hugging House was like hugging a tree: it was nice to wrap your arms around the trunk as long as you didn't expect the branches to reach down and hug you back. A tactile, hugging House would have alarmed her. He'd been here the whole time - surrounded by death and the death of his friends, dealing with it alone. She'd been shielded from the worst of things in the bunker, where she'd been toiling with the others over the vaccine.

Eventually she felt the tension in House's posture evaporate, and his chin brushed the side of her cheek. "I didn't think..." emotion pinned her words down and wouldn't let them up. It wasn't the tearful kind. No, she'd cried herself raw on the way over here and didn't think she'd ever participate in that particular human emotion ever again. It was just the weight of relief in seeing him again.

She eventually whispered, "You must be resistant?"

"I must be," he agreed. "You?"

No, she didn't think so.

"I tested the cure on myself, and here I am. I needed to do further testing..."

Her words trailed off. She'd been part of the team working on the cure but the irony was there was no one left to cure now. The virus had spread so fast, like a wild and hungry fire eating eagerly through a dry forest until everything had been torched. Everything left black and damaged and beyond repair.

"Wilson?"

House finally moved away from her. His face was unreadable for a second, and then a flicker of the most profound, unimaginable grief crossed on and then off before it became unreadable again.

"Everyone," House answered. "You're the only _real_ person I've seen in weeks."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: do not own.

I see monsters 

Chapter two

The lights are on but nobody's home, Cameron thought as she watched House studying the middle distance. He was tapping his cane on the floor and rocking himself in his chair - he seemed exhausted yet full of nervous energy. She glanced at the whiteboard in the outer office. It was more like a blackboard now, almost entirely covered in black marker, words underlined, words crossed through, frustrated squiggles and arrows, despairing of and firing away from the words circled in bold red.

House had been on the SICS6 'case' before it had been known as SICS6. Before it had become a sweeping pandemic and before that sinister inner voice had hissed at her in the E.R., turning her blood to cold slush in her veins: _this is like nothing you've seen before; this is something different, something new...and something, lethal_.

At first it had seemed like it was just a Princeton 'thing', a new strain of Flu - something alarming, yes, but ultimately something containable. And then in the space of just a few days it wasn't just a Princeton or a Jersey 'thing' any more, and then days after that it wasn't just an American 'thing' either. The virus had gone global. That had been weeks ago. It hadn't been long after House and his team had started working on the case that people began to pour into the hospital. A day after that the E.R. nurses were sneezing too and that glassy, weepy look in the eyes had crossed from patient to doctor. Cameron shuddered when she thought back to the sight of all those runny, bloody noses.

The last thing she could remember before she'd left for the other side of town was Cuddy - her eyes glassy and weeping, and clutching a tissue spotted with blood. She'd handed Cameron a sheet of paper from The New Jersey Centre for Disease Control and had said 'we' - the collective state of New Jersey and beyond as it had turned out - 'are counting on you'.

And then Cameron had left to do her duty. The mass exodus hadn't started then but it wasn't long until the soldiers and the road-blocks had arrived. She'd gone to the centre along with all of the other immunologists, virologists and microbiologists in the area worth their salt to work on SICS6 – Super Influenza C Strain 6, or _sick six_ as it came to be known.

An odd little sigh from House brought her fully back into his office and she noticed that he was looking up at her. He had a look in his eyes that asked her: _what now?_ She'd been waiting for him to take charge. Where were his bright ideas? She thought. He'd barely said a thing since she'd arrived. Then she concluded that he was out of his mind with exhaustion and opiates. She wouldn't be getting much from him until he'd slept.

Cameron wanted to get him out of the hospital, the flickering lights and deafening silence would do neither of them any good. She didn't think he was capable of driving anywhere safely on his bike, not until the morning. When she aired this concern he agreed with a nod. He reached into his jeans pocket and produced a large brown pill bottle. Pinching it between a thumb and forefinger he shook it, the remaining pills rattled at the bottom. It was nearly empty. There was a thick smell of liquor in the air too, an empty bottle of bourbon on his desk seemed the obvious culprit but the dubious looking bottle of mouthwash sitting next to that had probably contributed.

She picked up the mouthwash and held it at an angle, the green liquid sloshed to the side.

"You could have gotten a case of bourbon from the liquor store down the street for free."

"I didn't want to leave the hospital."

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I don't know."

House's clothes were filthy. She found out later – much later - that it was because of the two holes he'd needed to dig in the little garden outside Cuddy's office. His shirt and jeans were ripped and covered in dried mud and there was a dirty bandage wrapped around his right arm with some minor injury hidden underneath it.

"What happened?" Cameron asked, setting the mouthwash down again and nodding at his arm.

"People started to panic; I was the only doctor not sneezing and coughing up blood, they started pushing and grabbing when I couldn't find one word of explanation for them. I had to lock myself in the doctors' lounge until things...settled down."

"I think we should leave Jersey in the morning, maybe head for New York but, avoid the city itself. I don't want to imagine the carnage there. I think we should head somewhere with lots of open, rural space."

"You mean somewhere we can avoid the disease that will inevitably begin to spread from all of the unburied bodies," House said grimly.

"Something like that," she returned quietly.

Cameron didn't want to stay in the hospital another moment longer. The place was starting to make her skin crawl. The smell was almost unbearable; she didn't know how House had managed to stay there for as long as he had.

Her apartment was within walking distance. Many of the roads were blocked with abandoned cars – some with dead people slumped over the wheel. It would be impossible to drive a car in any direction. They could sleep at her place that night and then pick up House's bike in the morning and leave, probably forever; actually, definitely forever.

-o-o-o-

Tiredness was making it very hard to keep focus on the serious things Cameron talked about. They were serious, valid points, he was just finding it very hard to find the will to live. She was all geared up for an adventure and he didn't have the energy to speak. He focused on the gentle swell of euphoria inside of him instead, and one that had nothing to do with the various chemicals also inside of him. He was relieved that he was no longer alone, and that was sadly ironic. There had been many times in his life when he'd wished every living asshole from the face of the planet.

He hadn't had more than a snatch of sleep in weeks, just enough to stop his body from shutting down. Cameron was speaking to him and he could feel his eyes closing. He wasn't listening to any of the specifics - he was too tired - but he liked the sound; that gentle, up then dipping intonation of her speech.

"So, I think we should leave tomorrow, what do you think?"

Now she was here he felt like it was safe enough to sleep, although, he wasn't exactly sure why it hadn't been safe before.

"We should take your bike, and head up to New Hampshire or, Vermont-"

'-She's right.' Wilson agreed quietly. House came awake a little again and rubbed his face. He closed his eyes and swallowed. _The voice wasn't real_, it wasn't, even if he could sense a presence at his shoulder, just inside the office door - Wilson's old spot, where he'd once waited and lectured and folded his arms and rolled his eyes.

"...All of the big cities are going to be clogged with stalled traffic," Cameron continued.

'You should go with her, House. What choice do you have? There's no point staying here now.' Wilson continued and House's mind continued to wrestle. _You're not real_, he repeated it over and over in his mind. He took a shaky sip of the bottled water Cameron had brought and tried to focus on her words.

"Jersey City is one giant road block. That's why it took me so long to get back here. I explored as much as I could, but there was nothing but..."

"You didn't see anyone on your way over here?" House stammered. Cameron shook her head.

"Not _one_ person?"

"No."

He was the only one who'd stayed at the hospital and survived. Put that on a global scale and how many people could have made it? As if reading his mind, Cameron answered.

"There will be people, House; you can't be the only one with a natural resistance. Even if the virus killed ninety-nine percent of the world's population, there would still be millions of people who survived."

"Survived the virus, maybe, but will they survive life after it?"

"It's possible, and we should go and look for them."

"Why?"

"Because we need to do _something_, we can't stay here."

Oh, she was his little idealist to the end, wasn't she. "You're not seeing the bigger picture Cameron. It isn't just the people who are gone. There are no rules, the whole structure and safety that democracy offered no longer exists – you want to go walking around outside in that?"

"Right, _you're_ going to miss authority?" She said doubtfully.

"No, but I doubt the virus spared only the righteous and the good – I'm a prime example of that really not being the case."

'Ever the pessimist,' Wilson sighed. House almost swallowed his tongue as he shot a look to his left – nothing.

"I think we should go to my place. It's within walking distance. In the morning we can get your bike and then we should head into town and pick up some supplies, and then get the hell out of here."

"We'll need to stop at a bike dealership then."

"You have a bike," Cameron said unsurely.

"If you want to go all the way to New Hampshire we'll need a touring bike."

Cameron smiled. "So you'll come with me?"

'You have no choice' that old familiar voice said. It was true.

"Yes. I'll come with you."

-0-0-0-0-

House scanned the pharmacy shelves like a kid in a candy store, picking up bottles and reading labels before either setting the bottles back down or tucking them into his backpack. Cameron watched him from behind the counter. He'd taken a few things from his office and crammed them into her pack – probably so he'd have more room for the drugs he was now stuffing into his. There were a couple CDs from his office, some medical kits he'd made up a few days before. But she'd noticed him sliding Wilson's I.D. into his back pocket.

"Maybe we should take some antibiotics, too. I'm pretty sure _ten_ bottles of Vicodin will last you until we reach the next city." House glanced sideways and she showed him a crooked smile. "The Earth's Vicodin supply is now yours entirely; I don't think you'll run out this year.

"Antibiotics-" House said gravely. "-did _this_."

"Maybe," she agreed, "but if the cut on your arm gets infected you'll probably wish you took more than just king-size tubs of Vicodin and Percocet."

He rolled his eyes and something about the sight of it warmed her to the depths of her chilled soul. He stepped sideways, picked up a bottle, read the label and then started tossing her what she wanted, mainly broad-spectrum stuff; the first brown bottle contained little red and white torpedoes – Amoxicillin, then she only just caught the ampicillin followed by some streptomycin and finally some penicillin flew over her head and landed in the lobby behind her.

The streets outside were silent. The only sound was House, who rattled with every step he took thanks to the portable pharmacy on his back. It was eerie, just the two of them and when she reached for House's hand he didn't seem to mind her holding onto it.

They came to a dead Labrador with no eyes in the middle of the sidewalk. Sadly it had become an All You Can Eat Canine Buffet for a gang of sewer rats. Cameron looked away, disgusted. Testing at the disease centre had revealed sick six to be a zoonotic pathogen, crossing easily from animal to man and then back again. It had killed dogs and birds – although she had yet to see any dead cats or rats. Rats in testing had stayed healthy, even when they had reduced their immune systems with radiation the flu hadn't done a thing to them. It had wiped through humanity like a bleached cloth over a dirt-filled work surface, yet sick six had been far more selective when it came to the Animal Kingdom.

It was nearly dark when they arrived at Cameron's place. They were each privately relieved to get inside before dark, although, neither knew why the dark scared them now – it just did. With House's limping speed it had taken them over an hour. Sweat covered his face and he was breathing hard.

The water was still running but the electricity was off so there was only cold water. House took a very quick shower, exhaling sharply when the icy shards of water slapped against his body. The little bathroom was neat and clean. He stood naked and dripping wet and peeked into the little drug cabinet above the sink to have a poke around before drying himself off. The towels Cameron had given him were soft and smelled conditioned and he closed his eyes and inhaled. He'd been surrounded by such horrible smells that this was a sweet sensory overload.

He dressed in the jeans and shirt he'd taken from a store near the hospital and placed his old ones in the trash.

By candlelight, House and Cameron ate cold beans from a can in Cameron's kitchen, and drank warm soda.

When they'd finished eating Cameron unravelled the bandage on House's arm and cleaned the wound up. He fell asleep on her sofa before she'd finished dressing it again. He was so out of it on painkillers she considered that she could probably run a knitting-needle clean through the middle of him and he would merely grin at her like a stoned teenager and not feel a thing.

He had mentioned that he had not slept in almost a week, and the thick, dark circles under his eyes confirmed it. But now he was here, he was out like a little boy after a long day at the fair. When she'd finished she went into her bedroom and fell asleep on her bed without slipping under the covers. She fell into a quick, dreamless sleep but during the night House joined her. She woke in the early hours, and could hear his light snoring beside her and was dimly aware of the sensation of bristles, just touching the back of her neck. She looked down to see his arm hugging her stomach and his freshly bandaged arm was a beam of noticeable bright white cutting through the thick ink of the pre-dawn gloom.

She placed her hand on his arm and fell back to sleep, for she needed much more seeing as tomorrow would be a new beginning.

Tbc..


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own. Fox Does.

I see monsters

Chapter Three

House was not in Cameron's room when she woke the next morning. The worry that caused in her was nothing compared to the panic she felt when she realised he wasn't even in the apartment.

She dressed quickly in a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt, and was about to head out and search for him when she heard her front door open and then slam loudly shut again. She came out of her bedroom. House was eating chips from an over-sized packet and had a large carry-out bag full of candy bars in. He also had a box of breakfast cereal under his arm.

He flopped onto her sofa and began to stuff chips into his mouth.

"What?" He said, finally noticing the distraught look on her face.

"Next time, could you leave a note?"

Cameron knew her panic had been irrational but, everyone was gone now. Everyone. The idea that he might have gone too had simply been unbearable.

"I only went round the corner," he explained. "I had to put the drug store window through to get in there. I don't think the owner will mind much, though, he was _waaay_ dead." He stuffed some more chips into his mouth.

"Great, well I am glad you've moved beyond stunned shock to blasé humour regarding the mass death of mankind." She placed her hands on her hips and her lips hardened into a tense, unhappy frown.

They stared at one another for a long moment. House stopped chewing, as if the simple action might piss her off more and swallowed his food.

"I'm _sorry_. Next time I go a hunter gathering, I will leave a note." He reached into his swag bag and then held out a candy bar peace offering. She declined with a shake of her head. The idea of eating anything turned her stomach, especially something sweet. The unease and panic his disappearance had caused still had a tight grip of her stomach. At least House seemed more House-like this morning. That was a good sign. She dialled down her level of bitch from ten to two. House dug out his pills and dropped two Vicodin.

"I'm sorry. When you weren't here, it just, it freaked me out. I guess I'll feel better when we're on the road."

They got House's bike from the hospital parking lot and took Route 195 to Hamilton, New Jersey, to find a Harley Davidson dealership House had once visited. The place, like every other place in New Jersey was utterly abandoned, but open, thankfully. Even though the place no longer belonged to anyone, the idea of breaking and entering someone's business didn't sit well with Cameron, even if they were about to steal a very expensive bike from there.

House's face lit up once they were inside, and it was nice to see a smile on his face. The place was a wall-to-wall Harley Davidson heaven. There was a separate showroom that had clothing racks full of leather motor cycle jackets and helmets and everything else under the sun a biker could ever need or want.

Cameron sat outside in the sun on a patch of grass while House chose his bike. Every now and again she'd hear him muttering something about gear ratios and dual chrome exhausts; none of it made any sense to her. Could he drive the damn thing? If he could, that was all she needed to know. Eventually he called her in. It seemed he'd finally settled on something called a _Road King Classic_. He'd narrowed it down to one of two bikes.

"Which color? Deep turquoise and antique white-" he pointed at one bike, "-or Red hot sunglow and smoky gold?" he pointed to the other.

"Um, what's the difference, technically?" She asked, folding her arms and looking at one bike then the next. They looked identical to her, except for the paint job.

"Technically? Nothing."

"Oh, well just pick one. Either works for me."

"Just _pick_ _one_! How can I just pick _one_ when one is Steve McQueen and the other is James Brown?"

She sighed; she had no idea what the hell difference it made.

"Alright, uh, Steve McQueen." She said, making a choice because she wanted to leave Jersey today at some point, if that was possible.

"Steve McQueen," House said thoughtfully, stroking his chin like an evil mastermind as he thought about it. He looked at the turquoise bike, then at the red bike, and then back at the turquoise one.

"Steve it is," he said finally, stepping toward the turquoise bike. "Hop on, see what you think."

"Yeah, see what I think. Like you're going to change your mind if I don't like it," Cameron snorted as she slipped on behind him. "Oh no, no no, I don't like it," she said, smiling. "Pick another."

He shook his head and then pinched her left knee playfully, until it hurt enough for her to squirm away and whack him on the arm.

"Fine, it's great. Can we go now?"

She had to admit, when House fired the metallic monster up, and it roared into life before settling into a butt-rumbling purr, it sounded breath-taking.

"Cool, huh?" House said happily.

"Yeah." She had to agree.

They travelled to Point Pleasant Beach so House could get used to the bike and open it up a little. She clung to him as he raced faster and faster through the empty streets. All they could hear for miles around was the buzz of the Harley's fat Twin Cam engine. He'd made her pick out a jacket. She'd chosen a simple black leather one with orange stripes along the arms that matched the orange stripes on her black helmet. House had suggested that maybe she should go with the ridiculously figure-hugging set of all in one leathers but she'd told him she was quite happy with the jacket. The jacket felt tight and comfortable but she imagined after a few hours of butt-numbing travel, the helmet would start making her neck hurt.

They pulled up at the beach and sat on the sand for a half-hour and watched the Atlantic roll away from them. The water twinkled in a thousand places under the sun, and a seagull banked on the wind and squawked loudly three times, before swooping over their heads, making them both check their shoulders for bird crap, before it headed off into the town somewhere; Cameron wondered if it had an immunity to the virus, or if maybe the virus hadn't reached the coast yet.

She dug her toes into the sand and hugged herself. The day was bright but the wind was harsh.

"We should find a mall and pick up some supplies before we leave, if that's okay with you?" She said.

House didn't seem to hear her right away, eventually he nodded. He was lost in the middle distance again.

"I was here last year, came with Wilson. I dragged him to this bike thing with me. He isn't-" he stopped suddenly, and cleared his throat. "-_Wasn't_, into bikes, but he came anyway, and by the end of the day I'd eaten way too many hotdogs, and downed too many beers, so I barfed in his car." He snorted, and she laughed a little even though she felt a swell of emotion build over his words. "He was pissed at me, but you know - Wilson pissed. He didn't even bring it up the next day." He drew a circle in the sand and then quickly smudged it into nothing.

"I'll miss him," Cameron said. Her throat felt tight with emotion. "I'll miss all of them."

She looked at House and like the sky, his face had clouded.

"This is screwed up, isn't it?" He said tightly.

"Yeah," she agreed, and it was one hell of an understatement.

A moment later, Cameron stood and offered House a hand up. They took one long last look at the North Atlantic, and then left the beach.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own anything. All Fox's

I see monsters

Chapter four

It was going to take them about an hour to get to Elizabeth - a town just outside Jersey City - according to the navigation system House had fitted to the Harley back at the store. They just needed to head north along the coast until they joined the toll road. Cameron wrapped her arms around House's waist as he pulled on his gloves, flipped the visor shut on his helmet and then fired up the Hog. It sent a thrilling rumble through Cameron's stomach and she held onto House tightly as he pulled out of the lot beside the beach.

They were going to Elizabeth because she knew of a mall there. It was a large outlet store; the biggest in Jersey. It would have everything they needed, provided they could get into the place, and House had a few destructive theories on how to get in even if it was locked up.

They picked up the 34 and headed for the Garden State Parkway but stopped at a gas station just before it, so House could gas the tank back to full. After he'd been snooping around behind the cash register in the gas station, House managed to get the pumps working. When he came back, Cameron went into the station herself.

"What are you doing?" House called after her.

"I want to get us a real map, just in case your shiny new toy fails us."

"Ever the pragmatist," he grumbled. "Get me a beer for the drive."

"No beer," she said. Thank god we're not in Atlantic City, she thought then, he'd actually be able to get beer at a gas station there.

"Okay, get me a soda then."

House wasn't wasted today, which was a comfort to Cameron seeing how he was going to be doing all the driving. If they took a spill on the bike, there would be no ambulance, no quick response team scraping them off the asphalt and speeding them to the nearest Emergency Room. And, the more clear headed House seemed to be, the more control he took over the situation, which comforted her even more. He'd planned the route out, suggesting that once they'd picked up the supplies, they should cut through Jersey City and Newark, skirt around New York city - like she'd suggested – because of the carnage that surely had to be there, and then come back on themselves, and cut across to Fort Lee; from there they would hit the 95 and head for Stamford; from there it was a straight run along the coast where they'd head for Providence, Rhode Island, where they would probably stay the night.

The toll road was almost empty, except for a few abandoned cars. They'd both agreed they should pull over anywhere with signs of activity. But between Point Pleasant and Elizabeth they saw nothing that could be remotely considered as activity. The world was still and silent. It seemed like they were the only things in it. House drove his new Hog much faster than she'd have liked, and the journey became a mantra of her telling herself she trusted him to drive it safely, even at high speed.

When they passed the Shark River County Park at substantial speed - it was merely one elongated smudge of green on her right – she remembered a trip she and Chase had taken there a few months ago. They'd gone hiking there for the day. Nothing too strenuous; Chase had bored easily with nature when he wasn't physically interacting with it, on a surf board for example. But it had been a bright day in early spring and the birds had been tittering in the trees and she had enjoyed herself. Chase had kept an amusing lookout for sharks in the river, - _"or why else would they have called this place 'Shark River?'" _She could remember him saying. Then he'd joked about some little old New Yorker hooking a Great White and getting pulled clean in and she'd chuckled at the thought of it. It had been a cold day and she could remember, vividly, that he'd been wearing his brown North Face jacket, he'd zipped it right up to his nose with his hands stuffed into the pockets. His knitted beanie had been pulled right down over his ears. The sight of him like that had made her chuckle, too. _What?_ He'd complained, he was cold, so sue him. He'd kicked at stones, and she'd looped her arm through his as they walked through the woods. She'd almost convinced herself that she was in love with him that day but they'd returned to Princeton far too soon for that feeling to hold. The very next day House had jumped the queue in the cafeteria, dodging in beside her at the checkout and had somehow convinced the cashier that Cameron was paying for his lunch too - before she had even noticed he was there. Then he'd darted off faster than a man with a limp had a right to dart, winking and then grinning at her as he went. And then the idea that she was in love with Chase, could ever love him as much as she loved... well, she had felt stupid for even thinking it. The memory, and the conflicted feelings attached to it made her throat clench with emotion again, and she clung onto House a little tighter.

Chase had gone to New York to help out there the same day she'd left for the other side of Jersey. She hadn't heard a thing from him since then.

They arrived at the Jersey Garden's Outlet Mall thirty five minutes after leaving Point Pleasant, mainly because House had been doing a hundred for most of the toll road. It had been a clear run except for an abandoned vehicle here and there, but they were easy to spot and he'd dodged easily around them.

The mall's parking lot was deserted. House parked right outside the door and got off the bike. Cameron got off and stretched her arms. She'd lost feeling in her butt and stretched to get feeling back into her legs. House popped the lid off a pill bottle and swallowed a Vicodin and then they stood looking around the empty parking lot.

"At least we won't have to queue," he said, but it was said in a moderate, unsmiling tone.

The front entrance had been smashed in but there didn't seem to be anyone around. There were no cars, no bikes, and no people. Nothing but an empty lot and a stretching silence. The foyer looked dark and uninviting. House clicked his flashlight on, and shone it in.

"I wonder who was here before us," Cameron said, toeing some broken shards of glass at the front of the lobby with her booted foot.

"Looters, probably," House said with a shrug. "Probably wanted a free High Def' to watch the end of the world on."

The dark and the silence found them both hesitant to go in but they had to, and House was gentleman enough to let her go first.

"We should get a tent and some sleeping bags for when we're out on the road," Cameron began, "just in case you get tired and we need to pull over," she was trying to keep her voice calm, but something about the eerie stillness, and dark, cave-like qualities of the mall had her eyes raking over every store front. "I should get a torch too, batteries; we'll need food and water of course. What else do you think we'll need?" Cameron asked.

"Condoms?" House suggested hopefully. He raised his eyebrows and offered her that cheeky smile that was actually much closer to a frown when you studied it.

"No need, I already have some of those," Cameron parried, eyes still raking, searching, and watching out for any moving shadows.

"Hmm, a lesser man might have thought you'd planned this whole virus to get me alone," House said then, thoughtfully.

"Be thankful the only woman in the world, is also the only woman in the world who can stand you." She countered.

"Maybe it was aliens." House said then, holding the torch underneath his chin for effect. "Maybe we really _are_ the only ones left. If that was the case, the prime objective really should be to repopulate – there's got to be a store that sells beds around her somewhere."

She pulled the torch down and trained it ahead of them again.

"We aren't the only ones left," Cameron assured him flatly, "and you need to lay off the Vicodin agent Mulder."

House smiled to himself and they continued.

They quickly found a store that specialised in outdoor equipment. The banter had calmed her down a little, but now they'd stopped, Cameron felt worry rise in her again. She looked over her shoulder; she could still see the entrance, and the glorious daylight right outside it. The shutters on the storefront were down but the glass windows on either side didn't have shutters. House pulled up a metal trash can from its holder, encouraged Cameron to stand well back and then launched it through one of the windows. The sound of the explosion and the glass shattering violently inward reverberated along the empty corridors of the mall. House cleared the remaining glass away with a hockey stick he found in a sporting goods store that wasn't shuttered. When it was safe to climb through they went in and started to gather up what they needed.

Cameron picked up a little red MagLight torch from a bunch on the counter, and snorted at the irony of the sign beside them: _It's Never Dark in America! _ She put some batteries in it and stuffed some spares into her backpack. House was sweeping the back of the store with his flashlight, looking for a tent and some sleeping bags. The Harley had enough storage space either side of it to hold the sleeping stuff and the tent.

Cameron traded her old walking boots for a new pair of Gore-Tex hiking boots, and then picked out some warm clothes for the both of them which included a couple of fleeces, two for her, two for House and some nylon cagoules that packed away to nothing, just in case it rained while they were on the road. She picked out a mini cook set and a gas stove. The outer packaging claimed it to be: _the lightest of its kind in the world – or your money back!_ She picked up a multi army knife tool, thing that looked like it had enough gadgets on it to cut down a tree and handed it to House. He seemed to approve and placed it into the back pocket of his jeans. They dumped the stolen camping gear near the entrance and then decided to go back into the mall to look for food.

Their flashlights criss-crossed in the dark as they moved deeper into the building; when House checked over his shoulder the entrance was a pinprick of light far behind them. As cool as free stuff was, the place was eerie and he wanted out as soon as possible. When they came to a large marble staircase he sat down on a bench opposite.

"The food court is up there." Cameron said, frowning. House looked at her, looked at the curling sweep of stairs and then raised his eyebrows.

"Okay, well, be quick." He said, this appeared to be the opportune time to change out of his old sneakers and into the brand new pair he'd swiped from the sporting goods store, a pair of Nike Air Max 2009.

"Gee thanks." Cameron bleated.

"But I have a bum leg," he whined.

"Fine," she sighed. "I'll go see what I can find. Don't go anywhere."

"Consider my ass glued."

She jogged up the steps and then disappeared out of sight. House pulled off his old sneakers, tossed one and then the other carelessly behind him, and then put the new sneakers on. Oh, they felt good, but then an odd thought found him. There wouldn't be a Nike Air Max 2010. And there would never be a smaller, cooler, faster, _sexier _iPod. He was mourning the loss of all technology kind, when one of the shoes he'd just thrown behind him, landed suddenly in front of him again, making him jump.

He stood and turned, flashlight arcing wildly before hitting a nasty smirk plastered to spotty teenager's face. The first thing House noticed was the gun the kid was holding loosely in his right hand. The kid flicked the hood on his sweater up and rolled his shoulders like he was some sort of gangster, and then took a step forward.

A few moments later another kid appeared at the top of the marble stair case, also armed, and holding Cameron tightly by the arm. Her eyes were wide with fear. The guy with Cameron looked a little older, was much taller and very scrawny.

"Take care of him then meet me upstairs," he said in a thick New York accent.

"Aight," The kid with House replied, and then House heard a click. He turned to see there was now a _loaded_ gun on him.

"Hey, just calm down," House began.

"Shut up," the kid with Cameron said sharply.

The Eminem wannabe with the gun trained on House jerked his head and motioned for House to follow him. House took one last look at Cameron as the scrawny kid pulled her away and then she was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own

I see monsters 

Chapter five

"Do you think you could point that thing away from me? I've been shot before, twice actually and neither time was a _fun_ _time_ for me."

The kid, who'd just swiped House's torch out of his hands, had the skin of seventeen-year-old and was still wearing the retainer the dentist had forced upon him in first grade. He was pushing House roughly away from the atrium underneath the food court, and back towards the cavernous gloom of the retail halls.

"Yeah, like you been shot." The kid didn't seem to believe him.

"It's true. Have you ever shot anyone before, it's very messy."

The kid pushed him forward again and House turned to face him as he stopped walking and aimed his gun high. He crossed his arms so he could shine the torch in House's eyes, which blinded him, and aim at the same time. Even through the glare House managed to catch sight of something, something utterly intriguing, as the kid brought his shoulder up and wiped his nose some blood appeared underneath his nostrils.

"Nah, I ain't shot no one before but there's a first time for everything, right?"

"You have the virus," House said quietly, it was really more for himself than to spook the kid, although if it did spook the kid that would be alright with him because the kid was a stupid idiot. And House had to wonder why the stupid idiot wasn't dead yet.

"Listen, I'm a doctor-"

"-No, you shut up now and turn around," the kid said irritably. House turned around, but he could hear all the worry that had stored up at the back of the kid's throat, causing him to pitch his words as if someone had a firm grip of his balls.

"You're sick." House said calmly. "And soon you'll be very sick, and after that, fatally sick."

"I ain't got that virus! I know 'coz I stayed out of everyone's way, see, and I had my dad's old gas mask on for like a week, so I dodged that shit. Mike survived it too."

House deduced that the scrawny, heroin-chic New Yorker with the jutting cheekbones was Mike. "And is Mike's nose seeping with blood like yours?"

'Why the hell are you engaging this guy? Cameron needs your help?' A recognizable voice said firmly.

House turned to face the kid again and the gun was now shaking in his hands, but that wasn't as disturbing as who House could see standing just behind him. He could do more than just hear Wilson now, Wilson was watching the scene unfold. He had his arms folded, his tie loosened and his shirt sleeves rolled up.

"You're not real," House muttered but Wilson looked as solid and real as the kid holding the gun. House had barely taken any Vicodin today either and for the first time in almost a week he hadn't been mixing them with anything, just his regular pain meds.

"What?" The kid said, responding to a statement that hadn't been directed at him.

"You're sick," House said then.

"I'm not! I'm fine. Mike's fine."

It was hard, but House managed to keep his eyes off of...and keep himself focused on the gun toting cowboy in Adidas sweat pants and Nikes with Glow in the Dark laces.

"_You_ are sick. Mike obviously has a natural resistance like I do. You are _really_ lucky to have made it this far, but your friend is a carrier_; _he's infected you, and you are going to die..."

'Good, I think he's listening to you.' Wilson said calmly.

"Yeah? The kid straightened his gun arm. "Well you first."

House couldn't keep from throwing a look over the kid's shoulder toward his friend; his best friend. His dead best friend, the friend he'd buried days ago...

-o-o-o-

"Hey, I'm Mike," the man said enthusiastically. "And you are something." He let out a gentle wolf whistle and smiled dopily at Cameron. She yanked her arm from his tight grip and imagined the red marks he was sure to have left on her skin. The food court was a circle of fast food stands, Pizza Hut kiosks and McDonald's counters. Cameron managed to get a dining table set between herself and Mike. He smelled awful, like burnt plastic and wet dog and rotting cabbage. He had obvious red track marks on both arms and his shirt – even though he was surrounded by free clothes of all kinds – was old and dirty. Great, the virus had spared rats, cockroaches and junkies, Cameron considered bitterly.

Mike reached across the table for her arm again but she dodged away. He raised the gun to her head and motioned with one finger that she come back and rejoin him. She did so.

"You don't have to do this," she said calmly.

"Do what? What do you think I'm going to do to you?" He said. He grinned, revealing stained teeth; the front two were chipped. He made a lunge at her, grabbed her arm and tried to kiss her but she pushed him away disgusted. She was desperately trying to keep calm.

He laughed but let her alone for a moment. He had her pinned now anyway, against a trash unit that was built into the edge of the wooden barrier that circled the seating area. He scratched the track marks on his left arm absently with the barrel of the gun and the movement caught her attention

"Are you jonesing? you must need a fix, and heroin can't be easy to come by in a mall. I know where I can get you some strong opiates. Let's be amicable about this."

He smiled vacantly at her, showing her that horrible yellow maw in the middle of his nasty, angular features.

"You only have one thing I need Jelly Bean, and it's not pills; I got me lots of those."

-o-o-o-o-

House could tell the kid was about to squeeze the trigger.

"Wait!" He said firmly, holding a warning hand up. "Listen to me, I'm a doctor, and I have a cure for the virus. I can give it to you, but only if you lower the gun."

"Bullshit, you're not a doctor."

"Okay, if I'm not a doctor, why would I know a word like-" he puffed out his cheeks and searched his brain for the most impressive medical word he could find, "-!" House said in a rush. Although there was some debate as to whether it was a real word, he figured it would do the trick.

At the very least it had stopped his captor from blowing his head off, for now.

"I've got something for you," House said calmly. He kept his left hand raised in the air as a show of surrender and reached slowly with his right behind him, to his back pocket. He slipped his fingertips into the pocket that held the Leatherman Cameron had given him in the store, he felt the edge of the cold steel tool and carefully flipped the blade out and up. Then he slipped the whole thing into his palm and pulled it out of his pocket.

"I'm going to reach forward, very slowly, and hand you a vial; all you need to do is inject yourself with the liquid inside and you'll be fine. The woman I'm with? she had the virus too, just like you do, but now she's fine."

The kid glanced unsurely back at where they'd just come from, and started to chew the side of his mouth.

"You're really a doctor?"He almost whispered it.

House nodded.

"You know, I haven't felt so good since I met Mike," he admitted.

House nodded again, "Yeah, well this will help; I'll give it to you now."

-0-0-0-

Cameron heard the violent clack of a gunshot ring out somewhere below her in the mall. It made Mike flinch and look toward the staircase behind them. A coiled spring of anger, fury and panic released inside of her and Cameron stepped in close to Mike and kneed him as hard as she could in the groin. He dropped to his knees, grasping for her but she sidestepped his reach and then clambered quickly over the table. Mike reached up for her ankle as she scrambled over, but he missed her.

-o-o-o-

House had closed his hand around the Leatherman so it wasn't visible. He brought his hand around slowly, and reached forward. In the dim light the kid didn't see the blade of the knife until it was inches from him. His eyes widened when he saw what it really was but it was too late. In one deft movement House leaned forward and plunged the knife deep into the bicep of the kid's right arm – the arm holding the gun. The kid let out an awesome scream and House felt entirely okay with the violence of the action. He'd done worse things to nicer people. This little bastard had been planning to kill him. He had a good mind to twist the knife so it hurt even more but he didn't. The kid staggered backward and then tripped over his own feet and the gun went off accidentally as he went down. His arm no longer had the strength to aim and the bullet missed House and hit the window of a bookstore behind him. There was another explosion of glass as the window shattered. The gun fell from the kid's hand and skidded across the polished floor.

House went down for it but the kid threw himself forward, suddenly enraged and reaching out with his good arm. All he managed to get was House's ankle, but it was enough to put him off his balance and tipple him forward, hard. House clattered to the floor and landed on his face. He tried to roll away but the kid clawed at him. He tried to scramble up but the kid pulled him backward and House fell down hard again, elbowing the kid in the face accidentally as he landed but liking the effect it had on him. House did it again, and again until the kid's nose gave with a satisfying pop and crunch. He continued to elbow the bastard in the head until the kid finally let go of him.

Then House was free of him, free of his grip and crawling away. He got to his feet and scooped up the gun.

Relieved of the shooter and with a knife sticking painfully out of his arm the kid was no longer a threat, more a whimpering, bloody mess.

House hop-limped to the atrium - his idea of running. When he got to the marble staircase he grabbed his cane from where it was still resting beside the bench. He was about to mount the staircase as fast as he could, but it seemed Cameron could take care of herself. She came racing toward him. Before House could say anything – namely, the next time you want to go to the mall to pick up some nice things, count me out – Mike, the heroin-chic sex-pest staggered into view. Cameron was about half-way down the staircase when Mike raised his gun and aimed it at her.

House had less than a second to decide what to do. The decision he made was to aim for Mike, because it was the only choice he had. House raised his arm and aimed for Mike's shoulder and Mike cocked the hammer of his gun. The click terrified House because it left him with no choice - he fired.

The sound of the gunshot clacked around the atrium, like trapped thunder. He'd aimed at the guy's upper chest but he'd been way off. A little red hole opened in Mike's forehead and his brain exploded out the back of his head. Mike's eyes and mouth opened wide and an involuntary spasm made his left hand twitch violently. He dropped his gun and collapsed to the floor. House's mouth dropped open. He'd been aiming for his upper chest, how the hell had he messed that up so badly! He looked at the gun, horrified and Cameron turned to look at Mike, who was now dead. Just before House had shot and killed her pursuer, she'd had a look on her face like she was about to start fussing over him and explain how worried she'd been, but now all that was history. She stopped and her mouth dropped open too. She looked at House's gun, then back at dead Mike, then back at House, who was still staring open mouthed and pointing the gun up the staircase.

"You shot - - why would you - - you shot him in the head."

House tried to get the words 'I was aiming for his chest' out, but he couldn't quite do it. He was transfixed by the blood. It was everywhere. It was all he could see. It was dripping down the staircase and had splattered all over a roaring, marble lion at the foot of the staircase. All he could see of Mike was a blood-stained sneaker, the foot inside it still twitching reflexively.

Cameron recovered much quicker than House. She ran down to him lowered his arm and slipped the warm gun out of his hand.

"He was going to shoot you," House said without looking at her. "I had to do that."

"I know, let's go, we need to go," Cameron said breathlessly. She grabbed House's arm and tried to pull him away from the atrium and the blood and the dead kid, who could not have been a day over twenty, now spilling his brains and blood all over the polished marble steps of a Jersey mall's food court.

"What did you do to Mike!" Eminem's angry little brother roared at them as they hurried past him. Without his gun he was about as threatening as a wet kitten.

"Miiike!?" he half yelled and half sobbed. House's torch had rolled away from him and lay discarded on the floor. Cameron stooped, warily, to pick it up off the floor. When she saw the knife sticking out of the kid's arm, she found herself torn. She made a move to help him but House had come to himself a little and yanked her up and away.

"We need to help-" she stammered.

"-No we don't, we need to go..."

And go they did.

Pure adrenalin fired House on as far as Newark, but when they were just clear of there he suddenly pulled the bike over to the side of the road. He slipped off the bike, pulling his helmet off as he went and let it fall to the grass beside the road. Then he leaned over and emptied the contents of his stomach all over the curb. He stood retching and spitting for a moment, doubled over with his hands on his thighs to steady himself.

When he was finished he looked back at Cameron who was still sitting on the bike. She'd removed her helmet too, and her face was ashen. They'd gathered up the camping gear back at the mall - somehow - now he thought about it he couldn't even remember actually doing it, but the fact that it was on the bike meant they must have done it.

"Are you okay?" Cameron said. Her voice was an emotionless monotone. House almost laughed at her. Her words seemed robotic, as if she was asking because she knew she had to, and they were the words the situation called for, but she didn't seem to have any interest in the answer.

"No, I am not - how can I be alright!- I just blew a teenager's head off his shoulders..."

He stopped talking and retched again. It wasn't the blood. Of course it wasn't the blood, or the sight of the grey matter and little bits of bone all over the majestic marble lion. It wasn't any of those gruesome little details. The thing dragging his breakfast up, and surely the thing that would stop him eating for days, was the enormity of what he'd done. He'd shot a man in the head. He had taken someone else's life from them. Jesus! Mike had survived the near extinction of mankind and he'd shot and killed him. As a doctor he'd been responsible for killing people before, of course. Not as many as other doctors perhaps but in his early days he'd screwed up. It was part of the job, but shooting a healthy person...in the head.

He retched until he was empty and until it hurt. His mouth tasted foul. His eyes had watered so he wiped them and then he reached into his jacket pocket for his Vicodin and popped one, crunching it the instant it touched his tongue. What he really wanted was three, and to wash them down with a fifth of Bourbon.

"Maybe we should stop somewhere; I don't think you should -"

"-No," House said stubbornly. "We need to keep going." He wiped his mouth on the back of sleeve and took a step toward the bike.

House wanted to put as many miles between him and Mike as he could possibly could.

They drove for the rest of the day. Stopping only to use the bathroom or to have a drink of water. When they eventually did stop it was a place just north of Providence. It was seven in the evening and House's leg couldn't take another second on the bike. He'd thought about breaking and entering a motel, but then thought better of it. He had broken more than enough laws for one day and something about what he'd done made him feel claustrophobic. He wanted to stay outside in the fresh air.

They decided to pitch the tent beside a lake on the edge of the Lincoln Woods State Park.

The tent was easy to put up and Cameron did it by herself. She then placed the sleeping bags inside and began gathering wood for a fire. House leant against the bike, popped Vicodin and washed them down with the bottle of Jack he'd picked up at a store around the corner.

The dark crept in around them as they huddled around the fairly pathetic fire Cameron had built. Neither was hungry and they didn't say anything to one another for a long time. Eventually it became apparent to House that he was steaming drunk and he decided to break the silence.

"I had to do it. I didn't mean to do it so well, but he was going to shoot you in the head and I don't think you'd have liked that."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes." She hugged herself against an imaginary wind.

Then silence again, as thick as the darkness falling in around them. The shadows thrown up from the fire played across Cameron's face and made her look severe.

After about ten minutes, House said it again.

"I had to do it."

"I know." She said again, in that damnable robotic monotone.

"Then why can't you _look_ at me."

"A man is dead because of us..." Cameron began but her words trailed away. House got an urge to stand up, reach over and shake the sanctimonious tone right out of her.

"A man is dead because of _me_, a man who ordered his friend to shoot me, and was going to shoot you."

She finally looked at him, "I know. I know you had no choice House, does that somehow make it better?" This was the first time she'd sounded sincere about it.

'You better get that list out, House. You need to make a few additions.' An old familiar voice said.

_Oh god not now, _House thought. He looked up, and standing just behind Cameron and staring thoughtfully into the fire was Wilson, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

"You are not real" House whispered quietly under his breath; Cameron continued to look at the fire unaware that he'd said anything more.

'What are we up to know? we have asshole, genius, doctor,' Wilson started, '-son-of –a-bitch, raconteur, misanthrope and now we have murderer.'

"I had to," House said, and then he gulped from his bottle of Jack until he felt his throat burn.

"I know, House" Cameron said sharply, but he hadn't been telling her.

'Aw man, you didn't have to shoot me in the head,' House heard Mike say. 'I wasn't really gonna hurt her.'

'You really screwed up this time, House. You could have stopped this, but you let us die' Cuddy added. 'This is all your fault. After everything we did for you.'

'Poor Cameron,' Wilson said to Cuddy, 'of all the people to be stuck with, she gets stuck with him.'

House looked up and they were all staring at him, accusing him with their eyes. Cuddy with her hands on her hips, Wilson, arms folded now and a disappointed look on his face and Mike standing just a little behind them, desperately trying to hold what was left of his brains inside his head.

House popped another Vicodin. How many was that now, he didn't know, he washed it down with whiskey. And then Cameron sprang up, came around the fire to him and yanked the bottle from his loose grasp before he could gulp any more. There was probably only an inch left but she launched it way from her, far into the night.

"Well, fuck," he mumbled.

"Maybe tomorrow, you should drive only slightly stoned, that way we won't get killed!"

"Maybe tomorrow you drive. Maybe tomorrow you deal with the psychopaths with guns who are trying to rape and kill you, try calming them down with peace and love and sunshine and see how far that gets you."

He looked up at her and she looked like she was about to start crying. She shook her head and placed her hands over her face. He glanced past her to see if his ghosts had gone and they had. For now.

House was still sitting outside the tent long after Cameron had gone insde to get some sleep. But sleep was impossible. She could hear 'The Mamas & the Papas' coming from his iPod. She felt awful. She felt awful for him because it really wasn't his fault, but she didn't know what the hell to say. All he ever did when something went wrong was self-destruct and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

She sat up and unzipped her sleeping bag.

He was lying on the grass in his sleeping bag. His eyes were tightly closed. She grabbed her sleeping bag and placed it beside his on the grass. He opened one eye, and then offered her one of his ear buds. She took it. She got back into her sleeping bag and lay beside him. He closed his eyes again and she studied the sky. Then she moved her head a little closer to his and closed her eyes. Mama Cass's voice began to sing gently in her left ear

"'_Stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper, I love you_...'"

"I'm really sorry House." She said.

"There's nothing to be sorry for." He replied, his voice was a drunken croak. "But before we do anything else tomorrow, we need to get another gun. And you need to learn how to shoot it."

He was right. And how wrong did the world have to be when House was right about something like that, she thought sadly.

Tbc...


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Fox owns everything

I see monsters 

Chapter six

The little dome tent was like the inside of an oven when Cameron woke the next morning. The sides of the tent had been warmed by the morning sun and the air inside had been distilled by House's whiskey breath during the night, giving it a stale, reused taste. Cameron felt hot and slightly claustrophobic - she was still cocooned in her sleeping bag and her skin prickled with moisture. She wriggled awkwardly out of the bag and reached for the curved tent zipper. She was thirsty for fresh air at took a deep, refreshing breath.

House's idea of needing guns had seemed like a good one in the afterglow of their argument. The night had had them surrounded. The simplicity of guns equating to protection had made sense then. But a new morning had brought her some fresh resolve, and now she wasn't so sure that their next move should be to arm themselves to the teeth.

She put the thought on hold and opened up the front of the tent fully, and then crawled out onto the grass. Beneath her hands the grass felt damp with morning dew. She removed her fleece and tossed it back inside. She'd made a scramble for the tent in the early hours of the morning after it had started to spit rain. She had tried to wake House but he'd been in a whiskey coma by then. When the rain had started to really come down heavily that had roused him and he'd finally fumbled his way inside the tent, nearly pulling the whole thing down in his drunken stupor and then dripping water all over Cameron once he was inside. He'd bitched drunkenly at her for leaving him in the rain. She had pretended to be asleep, wanting to avoid another petty argument, yet she had still been awake long after House had started snoring again. The electrical feel of the air had hinted at a coming thunderstorm and soon enough one had arrived. There was something both thrilling and terrifying about being inside a tent during a storm. The fire - the build of which (according to House) could have been better constructed by a blind quadriplegic – had been spattered to death by fat raindrops. The repetitive, scatter-shot tap of the rain on the surface of tent had been an oddly comforting sound, and she'd listened to that for a long time. Eventually she had fallen asleep, but her dreams had been filled with the troubling sight of Mike, grinning and grabbing at her before a tiny hole had appeared in the middle of his forehead and she'd woken in a sudden panic.

It seemed like House had slept for most of the night, but alcohol induced sleep was poor in quality and she expected him to be a very sore-headed bear for the day. He was snoring now, big, rumbling breaths that tapered into oily squeaks.

Cameron reached inside the tent again for her backpack, where she'd stored a few cans of soda. She took a gulp of warm cola and observed the surrounding fields. The September air had a cold snap to it that hadn't been there a few weeks ago, although the sun was bright in the sky this morning and looked blue and beautiful in all directions. Then she was aware of that overwhelming sense of silence again. Cameron wished to hear something – anything, but the highway had stopped breathing traffic weeks ago and there wasn't a single tweet to be heard in any of the trees. Nature would bounce back, she was sure of that. It would take time but she was sure that the animal kingdom would get its shit together quicker than mankind would – if mankind survived at all.

She knew such thoughts would only depress her so decided to try and distract herself; she walked over to the road. She wanted to try the radio on the bike again. There hadn't been any kind of radio signal on any of the stations for weeks, and all of the TV networks had gone dead before the electricity had gone out. But it didn't hurt to try. The keys were still in the ignition of the Harley – who was going to steal it? House had asked her, feeling quite certain they'd either killed or outran the only threat to them for hundreds of miles in any direction.

Cameron fired up the Hog and turned the radio on. There was nothing - she'd expected as much, just the hiss of dead air as she moved slowly through the bands. She tapped the screen on the satellite navigation system which brought it to life; she was curious to see how far they'd travelled the day before and noticed something odd as she scanned the map. The thick blue line on the screen – the route House had taken from Elizabeth - had not been the most direct route to New Hampshire. Maybe he'd wanted to keep to the coast for some reason, she thought, but decided to ask him about it when he woke up. House only took the long way round if he was avoiding something.

Cameron cut the bike off and went and sat by the lake then. She took the remaining sodas from her pack, wrapped them in a plastic bag and placed them in the lake so House would have something cool to drink when his hangover greeted him. About an hour later House finally did stagger over to her. He greeted her by unzipping his jeans and peeing into the bushes just left of her. When he was finished she glanced sideways at him. He was tugging on a bottle of mouthwash he'd found in her backpack. At first Cameron thought he was drinking it and was about to say something when he gargled and then spat a stream of purple liquid into the bushes, before chewing on a bad taste in his mouth.

"A hangover in a hot tent is not a good thing," he said tiredly. He wiped his brow with the back of his forearm and winced as he looked up at the sun.

"I did leave the flap unzipped for you. It was like an oven when I woke up." She got up and reached into the lake for the sodas and then handed him one; he opened it and downed the whole thing in one. When he was finished he burped loudly and then tossed the empty can into the bushes.

Cameron gave him a look. The kind of look she'd once given him when he'd proposed to do something highly unethical to a patient.

"What? There's no one left to care if trash goes into a trash can or goes onto the floor."

"Maybe I care."

"Maybe I don't care that you care," he said pettily.

It was going to be one of those days, Cameron thought tiredly.

"I knew you'd be in a pissy mood this morning," she said in a low tone.

He stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then started to rub the back of his neck. It reminded her of Wilson and she felt a pang of sorrow deep inside her chest at the memory.

"If you've still got something to say about yesterday, I think you should say it now." House said in a confrontational tone.

"There's nothing I want to say." Cameron assured him.

"Right, except that's bullshit; you don't think I did the right thing, do you?"

Cameron stood up. She didn't want to have this argument again. She tried to dodge around him and go back up to the tent but he grabbed her arm. His question was a difficult one to answer. Which ever way she looked at it, a man was dead because of them. Because of both of them.

"You did the only thing you could do," she said finally, and she meant it but he didn't seem sated by her words.

"But you do think it's my fault that Mike is dead." His tired eyes seemed to blaze with angry indignation as he answered his own question. "Tell me this Cameron, the next time someone attacks you should I just let them kill you? Just so I know."

"Why are you angry at me House?" she asked calmly, "I don't blame you; it just happened, and it's awful, what else can I say? That I'm glad I'm not dead – yes of course. But it was at the expense of someone else and that doesn't sit easy with me, and it shouldn't sit easy with you."

"Of course it doesn't," he muttered.

They fell silent; they watched the lake. The water was as still and flat as a sheet of glass and Cameron wondered if the fish were still alive in there. Probably, she thought then, because they weren't floating on the surface.

"We should get moving." Cameron said eventually and she made a move to leave again.

"Cameron," House said in a low tone.

She turned and they stared at one another for a moment. Finally there was a naked truth in his face and she could see the despair over what had happened the day before.

"I don't want to shoot anyone else, but there could be other people out there who want to harm us. In fact it's highly probable. We need to protect ourselves. We need guns of our own."

"If you want a gun House you can get one. I don't want one and I won't carry one," she said gently. "Not everyone out there is going to be like Mike. There will be good people who survived this." She stepped around him and he let her go, wondering if she was right or if her naivety would get them both killed.

He studied the lake for five minutes longer and then went back to the tent. Things had changed and she'd see that in time, but as far as House was concerned he wasn't approaching civilisation again without a loaded gun.

It wasn't hard to find an outdoor supply store in and around Providence, there were about six to choose from. House chose one on the edge of town, mainly because it wasn't locked up. They weren't the first to go there with the intention of raiding it either – there were whole racks of shotguns and rifles missing.

Cameron went into the store with House but her face was a thundercloud and her arms were folded. The store was named: 'Bob's hunting and Outdoor Supply store' but Bob was nowhere to be seen - neither dead nor alive. He'd probably split along with the rest of the town weeks ago.

House was looking at hunting rifles; he had a Glock .22 shoved into the front of his pants and a Walther pp shoved into the back of them. He wasn't completely decided on the pistols but they were his favorite choices so far. He'd picked the Walther mainly because it was only a K away from the gun James Bond used. There was a small shooting range out back and he really wanted Cameron to _try_ and squeeze off a few rounds with a light handgun, but she wouldn't even get off the stool she was sitting on and her mouth was a grave, judgmental line on her face.

They'd had a brief argument before coming in. House had told her that even if they never met another human on the face of the planet ever again, they would still need a gun to shoot at animals with – because they needed to eat; he didn't want to eat crap out of a can for the rest of his life. But that excuse hadn't done much to break her mood. She knew it was only a half-truth. He was arming himself because if there were more survivors, and she was right there would be more, they would be arming themselves too.

But the hunting thing wasn't a total lie either. They had travelled over a hundred miles now and he had yet to see a cow still standing on its hooves. A lot of farming livestock had succumbed to the virus. But Cameron had seen a rabbit that morning, darting in and out of some long grass while she'd been sitting beside the lake. It seemed like Sick Six had left some wild animals completely unscathed.

House had gone on deer-hunting trips with his father when he'd been a young teenager. He hadn't exactly enjoyed the outings, time spent with his father had never been quality time exactly, but he had shot and killed deer before; he'd seen them gutted and skinned too, and figured he could remember how to do it. Vegetarianism wasn't the only option left yet, thankfully.

He reached for a rifle called a Mini Bolt.22 and held it up so Cameron could see it.

"This is 'the ideal first gun'." House said, relating a little of the blurb on the tag. "It's for shooting _animals_, not people."

This statement did nothing to expel the set grimace from Cameron's face; in fact she fixed it a little more tightly if anything.

"I do not want to shoot a gun, at animals or people – not today, tomorrow or the day after that."

Yeah, but if she met the next Mike alone she'd change her mind, House thought. He placed the rifle back on the rack and picked up the one hanging next to it. This one was called a Big Boy and it was a .44. The blurb on the label of this gun read: _Guns and Ammo_ "Gun of the Year Award 2001."

He placed the Big Boy down on the stool in front of him and picked up the .22 again. He figured he'd take both rifles, the Walther and the Glock.

"I thought you needed _a _gun, you seem to have four." Cameron noted when he went over to her.

"Yeah but now we're here I think I actually need four."

"One shotgun and one handgun, or I'm walking to New Hampshire."

"They're rifles." He explained blankly.

"One of each," she said, folding her arms. "You don't need four, you'll only blow something off you might want to keep," she said crossly, eyeing the Glock in his pants.

The Glock and the Big Boy it was then. Maybe he could sneak the Walther too, when she wasn't looking.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I own nothing. See Fox for details.

I see monsters

Chapter seven 

When the guns were _safely_ stored either side of the Harley, House and Cameron hit the road again. After a half-hour of badgering House, he'd agreed to keep the guns empty for the time being. She'd packed the ammo into a backpack herself; he could load them at any time if they came across any potential danger. House was a dangerous enough force when he wasn't packing heat. It was not Cameron's right to tell House how to feel safe in this new world. Not that he would listen to her anyway. But House's right to feel safe shouldn't breach her right to feel safe, either. It was a fine balance they needed to strike. She'd made it perfectly clear that if he was going to swagger around stoned on Vicodin with two loaded guns clipped to his person, she would make her own way to New Hampshire - Thank You very much! The world was a huge, empty and terrifying place now. Scary enough without the potential of House accidentally tripping over and putting a permanent hole in one of them, one that would almost certainly be fatal.

The sun was a repressive hot coal in the sky, and barely twenty minutes into the journey Cameron had to flip the visor up on her helmet just to get a little bit of air. The speed and the wind made her eyes water so she closed them and held tightly to House, but that just made her dizzy so she opened her eyes again. Eventually a bug swerved around House and connected painfully with her cheek so she flipped the visor down again anyway, feeling a little stupid for having pulled it up in the first place.

It didn't occur to Cameron that they had been heading the wrong way until they came to a halt in the town of New Bedford, although, the seagulls above should have probably given her a hint.

-o-o-o-

House's father had become a dedicated fisherman after he'd retired. And even when his military career had become a mere dot in the rear-view mirror of his life, John House had still been a man who strived for perfection. So when it came to picking a holiday home, he had picked a condo in New Bedford, Rhode Island, because it boasted one of the best fishing ports on the East Coast.

House pulled up outside his parents' vacation home and looked at it a moment, the engine idling as Cameron loosened her grip around his middle and undoubtedly wondered why the hell they'd detoured. He could tell her that he'd wanted to stop because of his all-consuming hang-over or he could tell her nothing. He could also tell her the truth.

His eyes swept the yard. Hail to the chief, House thought sarcastically as he spotted the flagpole in the middle of the neatly kept lawn. Mr. Red, White and Blue was long gone yet his flag was still flying, flapping proudly in the wind. Jesus he thought, as he slipped off the bike, who put a flag pole in the middle of their vacation home's lawn?

"House," Cameron said softly. "Where are we?"

The last time he'd spoken to his mother she'd mentioned that she was going to spend the rest of summer here– maybe even a little of the autumn too. _Wasn't she worried about the Flu?_ Yes, but what could she do? She couldn't run from it, so she was staying put. Besides she liked it here she'd told her son. Being here made her feel less alone. Being here reminded her of his father. And if the end was on its way, well...she wanted it to be here. _Did she want him to come up?_ No. He was a doctor. People needed him where he was. A fat lot of good it had done to anyone in the end, House thought.

Shoot forward a month and the closer they'd gotten to this place the more House needed to know for sure. Before they left this state he needed to know that she was really...gone. A child - and age was not an issue - needed to know if a parent was gone. He couldn't wonder about something that big for the rest of his life. He was quite sure that she was dead, along with everyone else, but he also knew that he was immune. It was likely that others with the immunity had a genetic connection. So he needed to know for sure before he turned his back on this place forever.

"Where are we?" Cameron asked again as she pulled her bike helmet free.

"This is my parents' vacation home." House said quietly, not looking at her.

"Oh?"

"My mom was here," House explained, "when sick six hit. I need to know that she is..."

"Oh," Cameron said again, this time she said it with knowing, "Of course."

-o-o-o-o-

House walked up to the little holiday home. The only sound for miles around was the flag riffling in the air. How defunct was that symbol now Cameron wondered, as she watched the stars and the stripes ripple underneath the blazing sun.

House was gone for about ten minutes. When he returned, the entire measure of color had drained from his face. He would not look at her. He picked up his helmet and got on the bike. She wrapped her arms around his waist but he didn't start up the bike.

"I can't drive any more today," he said quietly. "Do you mind if we stay in town tonight."

"Sure," she said. She was tired of riding now anyway, because of the heat, and the previous night hadn't exactly been a comfortable one. She figured they could find a hotel tonight and sleep in real beds. Seaside towns were full of hotels. She was worried about him though. She had no idea what he'd just seen inside that house but she could take a good guess.

It turned out they could go one better than a bed in a hotel. Outside the suitably deserted hotel they'd chosen to spend the night was a small food trailer. Probably once used to sell hotdogs and burgers to tourists. The amazing thing was the buzzing coming from it and the lights that were still on inside. When Cameron climbed up into the cabin to get a better look, she noticed there was a little fridge and freezer under the counter. She opened the freezer to find everything was still cold. And all of the cooking equipment seemed to be working when she tried the knobs on the stove and grill inside.

Along the harbour were pleasant restaurants and small souvenir shops. There was a place where you could arrange a fishing trip, and two fishing boats bobbed up and down eagerly in the harbour directly opposite.

"That buzzing noise is the back-up generator, it's a wonder it's still going," House said, as he circled the booth. When he came to face her she leaned out of the little serving window and handed him a chilled soda. He drank the whole thing down in one gulp, greedily.

-o-o-o-o-

House watched the ocean for a long time. He was sitting on one of four lawn chairs that had been set up around a white, plastic picnic table just outside the food trailer. He was as silent as she had ever known him to be. And wherever he was, he seemed to want to be there alone. Cameron decided to give him some space. She pulled some food from the freezer and set it beside the grills to thaw out. She set out some thick burgers for House - she wasn't overly keen on red meat - and settled on some hotdogs for her. She then decided to go and see what else she could rustle up in this town.

She told House what she was doing and he nodded once.

She found a store just off the waterfront and picked up some condiments for their dinner and a couple of bottles of red wine - the most expensive stuff she could find for the hell of it. She packed up her things in two brown carry-out bags, and then went back to the little marina and sat on the deck of a pretty boat called the Sea Mist. She stayed for about and hour, giving House his space.

When she returned to House it didn't look like he'd moved an inch, except maybe to shrug of his heavy jacket.

She went back into their impromptu kitchen without saying anything and set about the fryer and grills until she had them working. First she made some fries. When she took half of them over to House in a bowl he ate them hungrily, despite his hangover. A few hours later he demolished the burgers she made for him.

Cameron found a little portable stereo inside the check-in office of the hotel. They spent the evening munching potato chips and listening to some of House's CDs: Al Green and The Stones, amongst other things.

They stayed seated on the absurd little lawn chairs, drinking good red wine and listening to Mick Jagger as the Ocean rolled and lurched before them. The sun eventually dissolved into the water on the far horizon and the sky became a bruised purple color. The water, oblivious to the cataclysm that had happened all around on land, rolled and bobbed, and silence stretched out before them like an ever reaching hand. The matters of land did not concern the Ocean, it continued to sway, unaffected by the absence of boats journeying its surface or fishermen, tilling its great depths. Cameron and House watched the sun set. They stayed right through the gloaming and into the twilight. They said very little, letting Al and Mick say all that needed to be said, and a little later, Aretha took over.

When Cameron finally got up to go to bed – she was exhausted and happily full from the food - her chair scraped on the paving and seemed to bring House round a little, enough for him to give her a strange little look that pleaded for her not to go.

"I was going to go to bed but I can stick around," she said, "if you want."

He thought on it and then pulled back that rogue little part of him that had allowed her to see such a look on his face and crammed it back where it had come from, a place that rarely saw daylight. "I'm good," he said evenly. "You should go if you're tired. I'm going to stay out here a little longer."

She went to get two sets of keys from behind the check-in desk. She kept hold of the key for room one and gave House the key to room two – next to hers, she mentioned conversationally. Then she bid him goodnight. He didn't seem to hear her.

-o-o-o-o-

When House hit the hay himself, about a half hour after Cameron, he was more than ready for sleep to take him. He was exhausted; the salty sea air had done a wonderful job of tiring him out. The rooms were poky and hideously decorated, and the painting on the wall opposite the bed looked like something a doctor might use to usher the names of bad emotions from a schizophrenic. But the bed was comfortable enough and the sheets were clean. House stripped to his shorts and got in. He was on the very edge of sleep and ready to jump in feet-first, when a terrible sound made his heart pound and roused him with the force of a double espresso shot.

"You little piss-ant." The terrible sound was a voice, and the flavor of this voice was angry disappointment. It spilled awfully from the shadows beside the cheap hotel curtains. House had been dreading this. He closed his eyes. He'd known this was coming.

"You didn't think to come here before - before now! You disgust me. You always have. How could you justify staying in Princeton when you must have known she was sick! Did you even call her, or - look at me when I'm talking to you Greg – did you even call her? or did you just leave her to die in that house on her own, out of sight out of mind, right - _look at me_!"

House didn't want to _look at him,_ but he couldn't help it. His eyes snapped open because he'd been given an order. The light from the little lamp beside the bed was weak, but he could easily make out his father, dressed in full military uniform and stepping out of the shadows. He looked more disappointed than House could ever recall, and his father had been all kinds of disappointed on many occasions.

"You should have been here two weeks ago." His father barked, his fists balled by his side, and his barely restrained anger making his face a frightening mask of hate.

House scrambled out of bed before he could hear another word, reaching for his clothes on the floor.

-o-o-o-o-

Cameron had been out like a light when the three loud knocks came. She recognized the kind of knocks instantly: cane on wood. She reached for the hotel robe and went to the door.

"Thought you might want some company," House said casually. And she might have bought it considering he was a little tipsy again, if he hadn't then glanced oddly to his side, back at the door of his own room, as if he was waiting for something utterly horrible to come peeling out of it toward him.

She was about to say, _no, I'm good thanks_, because sleep was calling her name, soothingly, but the look in his eyes when he turned back revealed he was actually the one looking for company – desperate for it in fact. That she could see this so nakedly in his features was a bad sign. He had lost his mother today - sort of. They had both lost everything over the past few weeks. But for her most of it had happened out of sight, where she couldn't see it. Chase was almost certainly dead – somewhere. Her family, gone, somewhere, but she hadn't seen it. House had lost Wilson and Cuddy, and it had happened right in front of his eyes. Today he'd confirmed that his mother was dead.

She faked a vulnerable smile. Had House been on form, he would have known instantly that it was a pantomime - but House wasn't on form. She was feeling a bit lonely, she supposed. The empty world felt very big all of a sudden.

Cameron stepped aside. "I could do with some company," she said.

They got into bed and she turned out the little lamp beside the bed. House curled up behind her, but his hands didn't go wandering, he was just getting comfortable, which seemed to involve pulling her tightly to him and not letting go.

Cameron thought about how they might look from directly above: a tight little human bundle, curled together in the middle of a rickety, old double bed that would surely collapse if anything other than gentle sleep occurred on it.

As she drifted to sleep the thought of all that emptiness just outside filled her mind. She thought of all the other vacant rooms in the hotel. She ascended further in her mind until rows and rows of empty houses came into view; vacant buildings and empty apartments lay far below her as she drifted up; then she could make out deathly quiet streets and crashed cars with dead occupants inside, and silent highways. There were so many houses and buildings and stores and malls and schools and sports stadiums – empty. No more ball games or hotdogs or college lectures. The empty town next to this one had an empty town next to that. She went higher still, taking in the dark cities. Vegas would never dance with neon again and New York was asleep, now and forever. The empty sky contained clouds but no planes. She feared a dystopia lay ahead of them, unimaginably wide and dangerous.

Cameron hoped that the expanse of ocean not too far beyond this place was teeming with sea life. Maybe everything was okay under there. Maybe the whales and the sharks and the weird wet-life, some of it so close to extinction, could breath a collective wet sigh of relief, knowing it would now rule superior. Maybe a couple of million years from now life would start over: A gloopy, primordial soup would bubble over and something would slither from the sea. Maybe the dinosaurs would emerge again and they could rule Earth until the Sun reached down and swallowed Earth completely in an airless crush of fire.

What Cameron wasn't aware of as she thought about all of the overwhelming emptiness, was that House thought about it too. And He thought about his demons, who had voices now, and bodies and purpose. It overwhelmed him, the emptiness just outside the door. There was nothing predictable about life now. There were no odds or certainties to what could happen. House hugged her tighter as the chill of his own thoughts caused him to shudder a little against her.

"You alright?" She mumbled. Tiredness had her pinned and was pushing her toward a dreamless nothing.

"Am now," House returned sleepily. The two words pattered the back of her neck like rain on a tin roof. She didn't know what he meant, but then as she drifted to sleep in his arms she wondered if she maybe sort of did.

Then she was out again.

-o-o-o-o-

Cameron awoke to the sound of the shower pattering in the bathroom. House appeared a moment later wearing just a towel around his waist. His hair was wet and the smell of cheap hotel shampoo filled the little room.

"Is the water warm?" She asked hopefully. His one shake of the head dampened her hopes and little trickles of water ran down his neck and shoulders with the movement.

She got out of bed and figured a cold shower was better than no shower. But she didn't quite make it to the bathroom. Somehow, as she'd gone to pass House his eyes had become locked on hers and before they could disconnect her tongue had found its was into his mouth and his hands were squeezing her butt.

She was wearing a T-shirt and his wet hands left damp patches on the seat of her panties; a tingle of excitement tickled her tummy as she realised he wasn't wearing anything under that towel.

His big hands had slid around to her waistline by the time they came up for the first gasp of air; she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck as they went in for the second round of kisses. They'd kissed before but she didn't really count it. It had been a party trick to get something from him – like his 'I Love You' the time he'd hoaxed a sample of saliva from her mouth.

This felt like the real deal. Their mouths moved open together and they indulged in a little bit of exploration before House moved to kiss her neck and she craned her head back a little to allow him access.

Eventually their lips met again, clashing impossibly; the ridiculousness of this happening _now_, amid all the quiet madness outside. It made her feel like laughing. It also made her feel as tiny and insignificant as they absolutely were.

"You only want me now because I'm the last woman on Earth." Cameron mumbled against his lips. She slid her hands around to House's back and clawed her nails lightly down it. He arced forward and his stomach clashed pleasantly against hers but the hand that had just made it in-between her legs, and into that place that made everything from her stomach to her eyes feel giddy, stopped moving. He let his hand drop away and cocked his head to the side. Her eyes shot open. The tingle of wanting intensified between her legs.

"We don't have to do this," he said evenly, a cocky twitch of the cheek quirked his lips to the side of his face.

She reached for his hand and put it back where it had been.

"What else are we going to do?" She reasoned quirking something of her own - one eyebrow, and it said: Oh _We Are Doing This. Now. _

He thought about her words and then he gave her a little shrug and a little squeeze between her legs. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. He leaned in and kissed her smile. She kissed the edge of his smirk and his towel dropped from his waist. His erection banged her her leg. She fell back on the bed and pulled him with her, not caring about his bad leg, or the fact that this was House and he was an asshole and he would make jibes about the sex and her small tits...forever, because that's what they had now.

Then he sneaked a hand into her underwear and tugged it down and she thought about hookers, a whole chorus of them trundled through her mind, waving and smiling and flashing up sign cards with STD written on them in big black marker. He'd probably been joking most of the time about the hookers, but every single time?

"Condom?" she said suddenly. "Have you got one?"

He thought about it, then: "Sure, in my wallet."

"Go get it," she encouraged. He nodded but he didn't move.

"Maybe, you should," he sounded edgy. "It's on the nightstand in my room. You can't miss it. If I go in there I might not come back with this," he looked down at his erection.

She frowned but said nothing. Something was going on with him. Something had been going on with him since she'd found him stoned outside his office, looking at her as if she was the Ghost of Christmas Past. But she didn't want to ask him about it now. Cameron just wanted to get laid. It was that basic human urge. Are you hungry? Well eat something. Thirsty you say? Well have a drink. You're horny? Why you little devil, you should probably go ahead and screw someone. And she wanted to screw now. She wanted to screw House's brains out. She also wanted to give him what he could have had a long time ago and show him what he'd been missing, so she jumped up and went into his damn room to get the damn condom.

-o-o-o-o-

Sex with House was as awkward and exhilarating as she was expecting, but it was also tender, and that was something she wasn't expecting - as tender as sex and _not_ lovemaking could be. There was no doubt in her mind that it was just sex. They had finally gotten intimate but hadn't it always been on the cards? Yes. It didn't really change anything between them. Even the end of the world couldn't suddenly make House fall in love with her. They were stuck with each other and they were attracted to each other – so why not scratch an itch together. If she was honest there was a lot of her, emotionally, still very much tangled up in Chase, but he was gone.

This was just sex and they both knew it but that didn't stop House from taking his time to explore her body, with his hands and his tongue and his lips and studying her skin and asking what felt good to her, and letting her know what felt good for him. And his disability gave things an interesting flavor, rather than becoming a worrying hindrance. The lack of pressure on one side allowed her to try some new, circling hip motions, as she tried to bring about the correct feelings and tingles to the right place. This brought on an interesting, new kind of climax.

So interesting, in fact, that they decided to stay on in town another day. They both suddenly had the urge to do it on the beach. And then on the deck of a boat called the Roaring Sea Whore, in broad daylight; because, who was going to stop them?

-o-o-o-o-

Wilson, with his hands in his pockets, was looking at the road ahead. House had just finished packing the last of the stuff onto the bike.

"So where are you going?" the Wilson hallucination asked conversationally.

"New Hampshire, I suppose, then, I don't know." He didn't really want to think about what happened after.

"Do you think you two will stick together?" the Wilson hallucination asked. "She'll probably get sick of you at some point."

"She might," House agreed. "But then, she might not."

"How do you know?" Wilson asked.

"I don't."

"It wasn't your fault, you know?" Wilson said then.

House swallowed. "I know."

"Do you?" Wilson didn't sound so sure. "You couldn't have stopped it. Deep down you know that. You need to stop blaming yourself."

"If I'd realised sooner-" House began.

"-Then I might have lived another week - maybe two. But I didn't, and you know it would have gotten me anyway – would still have gotten us all. You're not God, House. That's always been your problem."

"Who are you talking to?" Cameron asked as she sneaked up behind him.

"Myself," House returned. He glanced to his side: Wilson was gone. House wondered if that would be the last time he would ever see that particular figment of his imagination, now that he'd had two good nights' sleep, had some food inside his belly, and now that he'd stopped mixing his drugs into a dangerous cocktail. He didn't think so. He figured that one would be back from time to time.

"You should learn to drive one of these yourself. We could carry twice as much gear, then."

"Okay," Cameron said, climbing aboard, "one thing at a time. Let's get to New Hampshire first."

"Next stop New Hampshire - then, who knows! I've heard Alaska is nice this time of year." House said and then he fired up the bike and that satisfying purr rippled through Cameron's body. He smiled because he just knew she was rolling her eyes. He pinched her knee in that spot that's like getting hit on your funny bone and she wriggled and than slapped him on the arm until he stopped.

They knew they were heading toward an uncertain future. There would be a long, cold winter ahead; one that would certainly get at House's leg and make him irritable. And he would get bored of her too, and that would make him want to argue with her.

They would probably drive each other crazy. They almost certainly would insist they were not a couple; each of them silently in their own minds assuring that circumstance had thrown them together and 'feelings' didn't come into it. Yet they would also probably share a bed most nights. Cameron knew that he would try and pick her apart and she'd do the same just for retaliation's sake. He'd pick at her ideas and opinions and beliefs because there would be nothing better to do. Sometimes in these moments he'd hurt her, very occasionally she might be able to hurt him back. House would be cruel with his arguments. They knew each other well now, didn't they? But nothing would really change between them. Trying to change House's mind was harder than standing up to the knees in the sea and hollering at the tide, imploring it to retreat. But there were solid and fixed things inside of her, things that House would try and chip away at, but would not succeed in breaking completely. They would probably drive each other crazy but wasn't it better they were together? Irritated and annoyed at one another most of the time, but together. Wasn't _together_ better than alone? In the empty and frightening new world that lay ahead of them. Cameron thought so, and hung a little tighter to House. He drove a little faster as they raced into the unknown, together.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Fox own Everything.

I see monsters 

Chapter eight: _And monsters see me_

**Four Months Later**

The farmhouse was so cold. How cold? He figured Russian Winter cold. The North Pole cold. Deep Space had nothing on this Godforsaken place.

New Hampshire: Deep Winter. The lake frozen for weeks; impossible to fish now. Outside was a whiteout. Every word he spoke had its own mist to ride upon. His fingers were constantly numb. His leg clenched and contracted. The pain gnawed at his thigh from the inside, clawing to be free of him.

He'd been shuddering violently under the blankets for hours. All he wanted was sleep. A brief respite from winter's violence, but sleep was impossible. Cameron had managed it easily. She had a way about her, zipping around all evening and keeping busy until she was tired enough to fall into bed and cast Zs into the ether before her head hit the pillow. Right now he hated her for it. House did couldn't scurry away his energy like her, not with a useless hole in his leg that winter had taken for its mortal enemy.

House hated the house. The fucking leaky roof dripped ice cold droplets down his neck and the floorboards creaked constantly, like bad sound effects from a '50s horror movie. His evenings in this dark December found him huddled near the fire and shivering terribly as he worried about the food stores. They were getting dangerously low. She'd told him not to think about it, but it was all he could think about. Be a realist, Cameron, wake up, wake up! She wanted to avoid logic at all costs and it was almost unbearable now. Now he realised he'd been in a losing battle. She was an idealist to the core and you couldn't fight that. It was impenetrable.

They were running out of food; fact. There hadn't been a rabbit in weeks; he was running out of ammo and they were so God damn fast when he did see one, swerving at the last minute, that the second he let off a shot it scared any potential wildlife in the immediate vicinity away.

His Vicodin supply was running low. But they'd decided they were staying put until the worst of winter was behind them. The cities were impossible to even bear thinking about; the disease of the rotting corpses. They needed winter to decimate the bacteria before they could even think about going anywhere near one. But small, unfamiliar towns were dangerous too.

She'd accused him of becoming paranoid. They hadn't seen anyone since the Mall. She'd accused him of cabin fever. She'd accused him of cowardice. _So you shot a kid; he's long dead; get over it_. Maybe not in those exact words but he decoded. He'd been reading between here lines ever since he'd seen the headshot. And she was the worst kind of bitch for choosing her moments to be a realist - only when it suited her.

Cameron's gentle slumber mocked him. Each peaceful snore was an insult. He'd have rolled away from her hours ago if she wasn't the only thing keeping him from slipping into a hypothermic coma. So he hugged tighter. An she roused.

"You okay?" Cameron's words were so soft and warm, he wanted to cup his hands around them to thaw out his fingers. She cleared her throat and let out a quiet, feminine yawn. For every inch of her that drove him insane her basic femininity was always a draw. She was always appealing, even during her most inept and illogical moments.

_Am I Okay? No I am not. Damn you for sleeping. Damn you for leaving me on my own in the cold and the dark. We have no food and you won't accept it. It won't be 'Alright'_

"It's too cold to sleep," he said witheringly. "How can you sleep?" his teeth chattered. His breath ghosted desperately over her shoulders. His muscles gave involuntary spasms.

"I don't know; just try not to think about anything."Seconds later Cameron was out for the count, again.

He closed his eyes and missed his iPod for a while, in an attempt to pull his mind from the cold. What else? Cable TV. Any TV. He missed the sensation of a full stomach. He missed Pay-Per-View Porn and Princeton. He missed his bike. He missed his guitars.

He missed his piano

He missed Wilson. He missed Wilson desperately; achingly; he'd never known anything like it, the sorrow that he felt for the loss of his friend. An extremely intricate, important piece of him had expired forever, and forever was a fucking long time.

The last time he'd been as low as to concoct Wilson had been seventeen days ago; exactly.

'I think you should move on to another town,' Wilson mused; thoughtful and calm. 'I don't know if you're going to see January at this rate.'

Always in shirtsleeves.

Always with folded arms.

Always looking into the middle-distance.

Always contemplating something - the space-time continuum, the theory of relativity, the infinite complexities of the impact death had on a friendship - any of these things, all of them or none of them. House didn't know what but it was something gargantuan, because Wilson never looked at him anymore. So, House ignored Wilson. Well most of the time. Sometimes, when he was desperate and hungry and cold – he engaged. He engaged with the lie.

"Go away." Always said, never meant.

'Maybe I'm not a figment of your imagination, did you consider that? Maybe I'm a ghost.' Wilson kicked at imaginary bits of nothing on the dirty, threadbare carpet as he walked slowly up and down behind House.

Always in French brogues.

'I'm so cold. And you can't help, so go away.'

Wilson smiled at the middle-distance. 'You need a puzzle.'

"I need a space heater. I need drugs." House poked the meagre fire.

'You have drugs. What you really need is to start working together. You barely speak to her anymore.'

"Have to ration the pills," House ignored Wilson's nag about Cameron. "My stash won't see me through till January."

'Then go get more.' Wilson sighed. 'All the drugs in thew world are yours now anyway, but they're the least of your worries. You need to hit the road again. You need food.'

House shuddered; it had nothing to do with the cold. "It's too dangerous."

'How do you know? You have no idea. Humanity could be rebuilding itself out there and you won't even look.'

"You're wrong."

"Who are you talking to?" Cameron asked from the kitchen.

Wilson was gone with the interruption. House missed his friend instantly. He had no control over it. Wilson wasn't just there when he needed him. He would appear sporadically; extreme moments of physical or mental stress.

It was all in his head, he knew that, but he didn't talk to her for two days anyway.

~  
She could feel House shuddering, but what could she do? She was cold too; she was exhausted. The more he withdrew the more she had to do on her own to keep them alive.

House was becoming an extreme contradiction, trying to push her away with his words as he clung tightly to her. Ignoring her for days then expecting sex. She rarely refused him because his irritability always turned to tenderness for those moments. She could never deny him then.

But he was starting to worry her. The drugs didn't help. The booze didn't help. The oversized days of deep silence, didn't help their situation.

In their first months together, after the virus, he'd been varying extremes of himself. There had been good days and bad days. But winter was starting to get to him. It was starting to get to her too. Being cold all of the time was awful, but it wouldn't last forever. It wouldn't even last months.

They were probably through the worst of it.  
Snow had engulfed the small holding two days ago. House was panicking now because he figured they were stuck. Soon the food would run out.

She could hike to the next town. Easily. But when she'd raised this option, he'd been alarmed. He didn't want her to go on her own and his leg wouldn't allow him to make it that far in the snow. The fear her idea had raised in him, so naked in his features, had terrified her.  
She was sure that hiking to the next town was the only option. She was heading out in the morning, with or without House's blessing.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Fox owns everything

I see monsters

Chapter nine

House was finally asleep. She knew because he'd stopped shivering, and each exhalation was a regular, tapered sigh. Cameron needed to leave before he woke again. She didn't want to move from her warm spot beneath the blankets, but she couldn't wait another day. She didn't want to leave House alone, but something needed to be done about their situation. A few days earlier Cameron had been watching House trying to shoot a rabbit in a nearby field. Shivering in the snow for hours and returning angry and unsuccessful. For some reason the sight of him out there had reminded her of an old college friend, Henry...something. She couldn't remember his last name. Henry something had been a keen sailor. Whenever Henry sailed open water, he had lived by a strict code: if the crew encountered poor weather conditions and a problem occurred, the person most capable of dealing with the problem, be that physically or mentally, had to deal with it. It didn't matter if that happened to be the Captain or the last in command.

It was obvious to Cameron then that she was the most physically capable of walking to the next town to gather some food supplies.

Outside the sun was lifting, somewhere. It was absolutely white in every direction and the snow was coming down fast and heavy.

Cameron shifted gently forward; the rickety double bed creaked with every subtle movement. She lifted House's hand and freed herself from his weak hug, glancing over her shoulder when she was clear of him. He didn't stir.

He'd started talking to himself again. It usually happened on one of the longer, colder nights, after he'd spent all day outside in the cold, trying to shoot something to eat. Very occasionally it happened when he'd indulged in too many opiates, or had hit his Whiskey stash far too hard. He'd collected the drugs and the booze before they'd dug in for the winter. The farmhouse had come with a flatbed truck and a good stock of gasoline. They'd scoured their immediate area for supplies in the run up to winter, and had stocked up before the cold had really set in. Now the roads were too deep with snow for the truck, and the bike wouldn't run at all. They'd completely miscalculated on the stores; a simple mistake to make. This was, after all, their first winter surviving an apocalypse. House had taken it hard. It had been his idea to stay here for the winter and even though he hadn't verbalised it, she knew he blamed himself for the mistake that was causing them to starve.

House rolled onto his back and sighed loudly. He began rubbing his head slowly from side to side on his pillow. It was something she'd noticed he did in his sleep often. She watched him for a moment, making sure he wasn't waking. Even in sleep House looked disgruntled.

They stayed fully clothed during the nights now. She carefully reached down for her walking boots, the ones she'd taken from a Jersey Mall months ago. She laced her feet into them, barely taking her eyes from House, and then got off the bed, with the strained tension of a cat burglar stiffening her posture. She pulled on a thick woollen sweater, adding to the one that she was already wearing and then slipped into her padded, green slicker. She lifted her brown, woolly hat from the oak dresser opposite the bed, and pulled it down over her ears. Finally she took her scarf from where she'd left it hanging on the bedroom door.

When she was suitably dressed for a long walk in the snow, she went back to the dresser and looked at the gun - her gun. The Walther House had tried to give her on numerous occasions. She checked the safety like he'd shown her and then aimed it at the wall, closing one eye. She weighed it in her right hand. It was light. She placed it the pocket of her slicker. Sadly, there were certain fundamental truths to her new reality that she couldn't avoid, however much she would have liked to. The laws of America that had once protected them were history, as relevant to them now as Ancient Rome or some forgotten necropolis in Greece. She couldn't take the risk of travelling alone without some protection. If there were people in the next town – something she did not expect – she would try and give them the benefit of the doubt. But she was not a fool.

Their small farmhouse was on the North Road coming out of Shelburne. She knew they were only about five miles away from Gorham, which sat on the North-Eastern edge of the White Mountain National Forest. She figured if she could keep up a regular pace she could get to Gorham and be back before nightfall. A knapsack full of tinned food would see them through the worst of the snow and then they would need to move on.

If House wouldn't face the truth she'd face it for them both.

She twisted the cylinder of an old red lipstick she'd found in the dresser and scrawled a note to House on the mirror:

_Gone to Gorham to look for food. Had to. Back soon. Keep trying the lake. _

_I've taken the Walther. _

_C._

She took one step back and looked at the message. It looked alarming, but his behaviour was beginning to alarm her. The world was one empty, silent graveyard. The world was still. Not a single person had passed along the main road since they'd been at the farmhouse. She had to believe there was nothing out there that could harm her.

House was sitting on the bedroom floor with the blankets pulled around his shoulders looking at her message. He sat there for a long time.

He wasn't going after her.

He had no idea what time she had left. When he'd looked outside, the snow had been hailing down and had already covered her tracks. There was no point in both of them freezing to death. He'd never been one for empty gestures.

The hands of his watch crept toward midday. The wind rushed the house and made every single window rattle in its frame. Three and a half hours of light left – if that.

At Noon he went downstairs and ate a tin of tuna fish. He got a pathetic fire going in the living room and dragged the sofa up to the hearth.

The familiar voice spoke.

'She's still so naive, she'll get herself killed. Look what happened last time.'

"Seventeen days later, he pipes up to bitch some more."

'Get up. Go. You have to.'

"I told her not to do it," he muttered under his breath. "It's her fault if she freezes to death."

'So you'd prefer to spend the rest of your life alone? Literally alone?'

"Nothing new there," House grumbled, tossing the stick he'd been poking the fire with into the flames out of irritation.

'Enough melodrama; snap out of this, it's not helping. Get up, take the tent. Go now.'

"Wilson!" House turned, ready to tell him to shut up and act like all of the other dead people, but there was no one in the room.

House closed his eyes and forced out a deep breath. What if the next figment of his imagination had her voice and her bangs?

He got up. Limping slowly toward the back room, where the camping gear was stored.

The snow made it almost impossible to read the map. She'd been walking through the woods for about an hour. She was about to reach into her backpack for some water when there was a load crack behind her. It sounded like a baby thunder. It echoed around the forest in every direction. She reached for the Walther in her pocket and spun around, aiming wildly, and her gloved trigger-finger fumbling to find the safety. There was nothing. Only the remains of House's paranoia that had rubbed off on her; it was just animal, or a cold tree branch falling to the floor. She stood frozen like that for several minutes. There was nothing out here that would harm her. She chanted it in her mind, over and over, until she could almost believe it. Then she placed the gun back in her pocket, pulled her hat down until it almost covered her eyes and marched on.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: Not mine. It all belongs to Fox.

I see monsters

Chapter Ten

House opened the front door to a frozen Hell. The wind entered uninvited, and slammed the kitchen door closed on the opposite side of the room. He locked the front door for the sake of it, then went into the yard and keyed the truck's ignition, letting the engine turn over for ten minutes. He did it everyday to keep it running. They'd need it when the highway thawed out. Then he set off for the North Road. He'd packed the tent, two torches and a handgun. Half an hour into his trek and he'd decided that the seasons were gendered, and winter was a cold-hearted bitch. A hateful spinster. She'd probably been spurned by autumn, the bastard male of the seasons who changed and engorged and ripened everything, removing anything of worth from winter's path before she arrived. Leaving her nothing to do but go on a 'Hell hath no Fury' trip and punish everything left.

This snow was her baby bitch, and it was all for him.

His journey progressed at an agonizingly slow pace. His cane was useless. His cane was a joke. He'd have tossed it away if it hadn't been his only one. He was going to die out here for Cameron. He'd make sure to die with his bare rear pointing up so she could kiss his frozen ass when she found her way back.

-o-o-o-

The North road out of Shelburne took Cameron over the Connecticut River where she picked up the Route 2 Highway. She'd been relieved to see the river flowing, and unfrozen. A confirmation that it wouldn't be winter forever; life moved on. Spring would be here soon enough. Walking along the road alone felt dangerous, so she entered the forest. The map had revealed a trail there that followed the highway, and the snow in the forest wasn't as deep. She followed the trail until she was about a mile outside of town where she picked up Route 2 again.

The sign reading "Welcome to GORHAM, Incorporated 1836" was a sight for sore eyes. She checked her watch and realised the walk had taken her about five hours – she figured it would have taken much less time if the snow hadn't been so deep. She was breathing hard and her cheeks were flushed from the walk, but the adrenalin surge felt good. She dropped her pack and took a rest for five minutes. Her skin prickled with sweat, and she felt hot from the exercise. The plan was to get in and get out of town quickly. She didn't mind following the highway at night, the snow made everything brighter anyway, she just didn't want to be in the forest when night fell in.

What House had labelled a 'One Donkey Town' (Because it wasn't big enough for a horse) was actually very pleasant and accommodating. But she figured he would need to change his idiom to 'One Moose Town' as there were no donkeys to be found, but there was a large moose waiting to greet her as she approached the centre of town. It was standing in the middle of the street, indifferent to its surroundings and chewing winter flowers from an otherwise empty bed outside a restaraunt. Cameron didn't know if they were dangerous animals. She didn't think so, but she waited for a few minutes to see what it would do. When it did nothing but ignore her, she decided to move carefully past it and collect the things she needed.

She and House had raided the obligatory Mom 'N' Pop's grocery store long before winter. As she approached the store this time she noticed, with some alarm, that someone else had been there since they had. When they'd been there before they'd found it open. There had been no need to break in. Cameron could see that the window had been smashed in completely and snow had blown into the front of the store. She stepped back and scanned the town for signs of life, placing her hand over the Walther in her pocket. It seemed like it was just her and the moose. The only sound came from the wind and the creak of the sign above the store. She went in, and filled her pack quickly with any tinned goods she could find. When that was done, she filled a take-out bag with candy bars and potato chips for House. There wasn't a lot left when she was done. They had only taken a small amount of what had originally been there. Whoever had been there after them had taken nearly everything else. She found a couple of dented Pepsi cans on the floor and put them in her pack too.

Cameron left the store and opened a bag of potato chips. She ate quickly. It was the first thing she'd eaten all day and she felt light-headed from burning more energy than her body had fuel for. She crossed to the small bookstore on the opposite side of the road and found it open and vacant. She'd half-expected to see some ancient bookstore owner slumped behind the counter. A first edition of _Moby Dick_ or something equally classic open in front of him, fully committed to reading until the world turned black for him. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. There was nothing to be found but dust, a mediocre offering of mainstream bestsellers and a tiny selection of classics at the back. She scanned the shelves for five minutes, allowing herself no more time than that. Eventually she pocketed a couple of paperbacks from the recommendations standee, and picked out a beautiful, leather-bound copy of _The Great Gatsby_ for House. She managed to fit them all into the big front pocket of her slicker and then left the store.

On her way back out of town, she came upon a small clinic with a pharmacy attached to the side and decided to stock up on some essentials. The smell inside the pharmacy was horrifying. There were four rotting corpses in the waiting area alone. There had to be more in the back. She gagged but kept her lunch down. She found some bandages, and filled two medicine bottles with Vicodin, against her better judgment. But she needed peace offerings, and nothing said 'I'm sorry' better, than highly addictive painkillers when it came to House. She crossed into the clinic and found five more dead bodies, one of them seemed to be a dead doctor. There was nothing worth taking in the clinic, so she swiped a few patient files, losing the folders and stuffing just the pages into the front pocket of her slicker. She figured it would be something for House to do later. She could pitch him symptoms and see if he could guess the ailment in three clues or less. She'd do anything to keep his mind active. House needed puzzles like she needed air. She knew it was highly unethical to take the files, but she was quite sure every patient was long dead now, and wanting to keep House semi-sane overruled her moral convictions.

Before she made it outside she retched, spilling bile and undigested potato chips onto the floor, the smell finally getting to her. Once outside she wiped her eyes and gulped in fresh air. The moose hadn't moved the whole time she'd been in town. She bid him farewell and began her journey home.

-o-o-o-o-

What a strange old day. First that damn moose had arrived, and then the pretty girl had followed. He'd watched her moving around his town, taking his supplies. He'd become transfixed by her, peeking carefully through the blinds of the Sheriff station. He'd been about to put a bullet in that old Moose's head but had been _dumfounded_ to see the little missy just strutting into town. He'd retreated, scampering for the station, so sure he'd been seen by her, but she hadn't even noticed him.

Al was quick when he wanted to be. You had to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on old Al.

He just couldn't take his eyes off her. Sure, he could've gone and put a bullet in _her_ head anytime, but he'd been unsure at first whether she was really there, or if he was just seeing things again.

And where was the fun in killing her if she was real? When he'd decided for sure that she actually existed, he'd decided he was going to play a little game. He was going to see how far he could track her back out of town before she noticed he was following. Hell, for sport, he wouldn't even take the rifle.

It had been so long since he'd had any fun, and how dare she just come into _his _town like that, completely uninvited. Well, old Al would show her what they did to thieves in Gorham.

-o-o-o-o-

Cameron's feet were beginning to ache inside her boots. Hunger licked at her stomach, but she couldn't face the idea of eating anything else yet. The land was slightly raised on one side of the trail and dipped on the other. To her right, a regiment of Black Spruce trees stood guard. The ground was uneven and dangerous. Rocks and broken tree branches had become frozen into the path. Her foot met something solid as she stepped over a large rock and she tripped forward, only catching her balance at the last minute. She'd already been grounded twice and her knees were scuffed. The forest seemed to expand in every direction like a woodland universe. It was just after 4 P.M. and it would be dark soon. She needed to pick up the pace.

She approached a withered Jack Pine that had branches like outstretched arms, as if welcoming her. Just beyond the pine, something caught her eye: a flash of colour. She reached for the gun, and then realised with mild terror that she'd left it back in Gorham, on a bookshelf at the bookstore. Crap, oh crap. House was going to flip out. It only took a fraction of a second for her eyes to adjust between the near and far points of her vision, and then another fraction for the tension in her facial expression to relax into utter surprise.

It _couldn't_ be.

Ahead of her in the forest was Robert Chase, or at least, that's what her eyes were telling her. The sight made her heart clench. Her lungs emptied of air. Her gloved left hand came to her face, autonomous with shock.

Chase was wearing blue jeans and a white shirt, complete with tie; covering the shirt was a woollen tank top. He had his fingers tucked into the front pockets of his jeans with just his thumbs showing. He wore no jacket, and his breathing did not charge the cold air.

Wind heaved through the trees, making her slicker flap out behind her.

"You're not real." Words for herself, not for him.

A familiar smirk appeared, derisive yet tender. God she had _missed_ him. She wanted to run forwards and hug him. She wanted to breathe in his smell. But Chase had to be dead and ghosts didn't exist. She believed in Darwin and the Big Bang and hard, scientific fact. _Be rational._ This visualisation was her stressed brain playing tricks on her; nothing more.

She closed her eyes, hoping it would make him go away, but when she opened them again Chase was much closer, maybe twelve feet away from her. It was comforting yet terrifying at the same time.

She closed her eyes again because she didn't want to see him anymore. She couldn't bear to see him when she _knew_ he could not really be there.

'Allison,' he said tenderly, 'don't be frightened.'

Cameron covered her ears with her hands and shook her head. She hadn't mourned Chase, not properly. Survival had taken up every inch of her life since the plague had decimated mankind. Now four months' worth of repressed emotion spilled forth and she couldn't help but let it out. She allowed herself to cry, to grieve for all of the people that she had lost. But when she opened her eyes again he was _still_ there. Patient. Watching the tears spill down her cheeks. She sniffed, wiping her wet face on the back of her gloves until her cheeks stung from the rough wool. She felt like an abandoned child alone in the woods.

'Allison,' the tenderness in Chase's voice replaced by something more severe, 'he's got a knife.'

Chase looked past her toward the Spruces behind her. She turned. There was a dark figure dressed in army fatigues and a Flack jacket moving toward her at an alarming speed.

"Jesus," she gasped, surprised and frightened. Instantly she knew this man was real. She turned to Chase again but he was gone. She felt for the Walther again but it wasn't there. It was not there, and this was why House had warned her not to go alone.

The man stopped when he noticed that she'd noticed him.

"Hey," he said, smiling. He held his hands up in a gesture of peaceful surrender. They looked dirty.

"I'm sorry, didn't mean to startle you. I saw you in town, before." He jabbed a thumb behind him. "You're the first person I've seen in months!"

He started to close the distance between them, his right arm outstretched, offering his hand. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Al."


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: not mine

I see monsters

Chapter eleven

House was following the North Road out of town, hoping to pick up Cameron's trail. He was overloaded and unbalanced; when the wind got up, it didn't take much to dump him sideways in the snow. When he stumbled, his vexation increased. He hated Cameron for making him do this, for being so naive, for being so _wrong_. Wrong had such definitive consequences now. She should have known better.

The wind cut and sliced and House stopped trudging for a moment. He steadied himself against the gust to avoid falling. The drifts along the side road had been replenished a few hours ago with fresh snow. The gust took the fine dust from the top of one and spun it into the air, where it curled and danced. He zipped his jacket as far as it would go, up past his chin. Then he went on, shuddering beneath his inadequate layers and cursing Cameron in his mind with each step.

He didn't like being cold. It resided at the top of a very long list of things he didn't like. But all he'd been for a month was cold. Being outside in this frozen wasteland was unbearable. His face had numbed into a permanent grimace and his fingers were frozen stiff inside his thin, cotton gloves. He hefted his backpack into a more comfortable position on his shoulders and staggered on.

His thigh burned, aching and angry. He reached into his pocket and found his pill bottle. He got the cap off with some difficulty, not wanting to take his gloves off. Eventually he swallowed down two pills.

Fifteen minutes later the road met a bridge that took him over the Connecticut River. The flow was strong and he wondered why he hadn't thought to bring a rod, maybe something edible was lurking down there. He stopped on the other side of the bridge, and kicked some of the snow from his boots. House figured Cameron must have crossed here before him. The light was fading so he pulled out Cameron's Maglite and swept the beam from side to side, searching the surrounding area. It hadn't snowed in a few hours now, so he went over the ground slowly, looking for footprints.

He was about to pocket the light when he noticed a set of prints, just beyond the road. When he reached them he noticed there was a trail leading into the woodland beside the road. He placed his booted left foot next to one of the prints and dwarfed it - Cameron, surely. Something in him lifted. He hoped she would be methodical enough to return home from town the same way she'd gone in. The relief he felt doused his anger, and the rage he'd been nurturing for hours was gone in an instant - vanquished by the idea that he might find her soon. His body craved sleep. His thigh ached so miserably. He just wanted to find her and go back as soon as possible. Eating a tasteless meal and falling asleep cold sounded like heaven for once.

As night approached from all sides, House followed the tracks into the woods and was swallowed by darkness.

_ _ _

Cameron did not take Al's hand. His gesture actually forced her to step back. The first thing that really struck her was the smell. He reeked of decay and his body odour was stale. He couldn't have bathed in months. His clothes were filthy and soiled, and his face swarthy with muck and dried sweat. He wore a knitted green hat on his head. Tufts of greasy orange hair poked out from underneath it at his temples. The lower half of his face was covered by a prickly, ginger beard.

The second thing that struck her about Al was the sheer size of him. He was much taller than House and far stockier. She and House had both dropped several pounds since winter had set in, but Al didn't look like he'd been skipping any meals. His flabby gut hung over his belt and his chin had a cushion of fat beneath it. He'd obviously been living off the junk food and tinned goods in the store. Maybe he'd killed a moose. Maybe he had stores of meat somewhere, because he didn't look hungry.

Al hitched his belt up over his flabby stomach and Cameron noticed the knife tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Whatever he said, she needed to be afraid of this man.

He flicked his jacket back, out behind him, so Cameron could get a real good look at that knife. The thick leather handle had sweaty fingerprints on it. From what she could see of it, it looked like a hunting knife. The wind sped by them like a train skipping a small station on its way to a big city, and riffled the tree branches, making Cameron shudder involuntary. He smirked. He scratched the bristles under his chin with all of the fingers of his right hand, scratching with the movement one applied to the spot behind a dog's ear.

"You didn't pay for any of those goods you took from my store. That's stealing."

"I'm sorry," Cameron said. "I didn't mean to take your property. I thought the owners of the store were dead."

"Oh they are." He waved a dismissive hand. His movements were as slow and lethargic as his drawl. She knew instinctively that it masked a speed and strength far beyond her own. Al could hustle if he needed to, even with his extra weight. She would not be able to fight this man. Could she outrun him? She wasn't sure.

"That store belonged to my mom and dad but they're long gone with that sick sick virus. So what's left is mine."

Cameron did not correct Al's mistaken pronunciation of the virus. She merely nodded acknowledgment that she'd heard his words. The expectant gleam in his eyes chilled her more than the wind. They both knew this was a pantomime. He was only _barely_ pretending. This man wasn't only going to hurt her, he was going to enjoy it. He was going to enjoy everything about the process of hurting her, the build up, especially. Her fear delighted him. His pupils were dilated; he looked like House did whenever he'd taken two Vicodin and then chased them down with a double whiskey. He was getting high off this.

"I'm very sorry I took your things. I can give you everything back right now. I'm sorry you had to come all this way for it."

"Not a problem. Not a problem. It's great to see someone! Are you here by yourself?"

She nodded. She wasn't about to give House away and there wasn't much a lie could do for her now. It was obvious she'd come alone. He'd been following her since town. The idea that he'd been watching her without her knowing made her shiver again.

"I haven't seen a _real_ person in a long time." Al said.

This comment registered, somewhere, because of the way he'd emphasised the word 'real', but she didn't have time now to deal with it. Her survival instincts were kicking in left, right and centre, giving her options and suggesting routes of escape.

Cameron let her pack slide from her shoulder, down her arm, until she had the strap in her right hand. "I'll give you your things back."

Al grinned again, showing all of his teeth. They were oddly perfect and unnaturally white, completely at odds with his dirty clothing, unshaven beard and dirty face.

"You could just pay for it, now," Al suggested. "I have food and you look like you need it."

"I have no money. It's kind of redundant," Cameron said. "I'll just give you the things back, and we'll call it even."

"Well, I had to walk all the way out here, how we going to settle that debt?"

There was a look on his face like he'd already planned out exactly how this was going to go. Fear had desiccated her mouth and was now drying out her throat. She tried clearing it. She couldn't even taste the bile from being sick at the clinic in town anymore.

Al took one step forward and Cameron tensed. Every inch of her wanted to be ten steps away from him. But she knew what she was going to do now, and she needed him closer. She needed to be absolutely precise or she would probably die here. She swung the bag slightly back as if she was going to use the momentum to swing it into her arms so she could give him back his things, but then she reached down with her left hand and grabbed the pack with both hands. She threw it back hard and then swung it up and around, aiming to catch Al in the side of the head.

Al caught the pack easily and sliced at her arm. She hadn't even seen him grab the knife. The blade went deep into the back of her arm, right to the bone, but she barely felt it. He pulled the knife back and she turned and ran. The pack went with Al and Alison Cameron ran for her life.

_ _ _

House hadn't been in the woods for long when he noticed he could hear something in the woods. He stopped and listened. By the time he'd worked out what it was, he could see the outline of someone running toward him in the gloom. He reached for his gun and aimed. He was about to call out, maybe even let off a warning shot but then he recognized who it was. Cameron ploughed into him, blind to him even standing there. She pulled away from him, shocked and lashing out, landing pathetic punches on his chest. He held on to her.

"Calm down Cameron, it's me," he said.

She stopped struggling instantly. She looked at him for a moment, and then wrapped her arms around him. He allowed her to stay that way for a moment, but then he pushed her away, remembering how pissed he was. She grabbed his hand and tugged, trying to pull him back in the direction he'd just come, but he didn't move.

"We need to go, now."

House noticed the fear in her voice.

"Why? Where the hell have you been, and what stupid thing did you do?"

"I met someone, a psychopath. We need to move."

"What?" He shot a look over her shoulder.

"Move House! Please, come on."

She was shaking and bleeding and even at a glance in the dark he could tell the gash on her arm was deep. If she didn't feel it yet, she would soon, and when she did she would probably pass out.

"I only have one speed, and that's slow, so you might as well calm down and tell me what happened."

Cameron didn't have time to explain. House could hear something else coming toward them, the powerful crunch, crunch, crunch of someone jogging in the snow; the sound of branches snapping under travelling feet. He shifted Cameron behind him and lifted his aim. With his free hand he found the torch and clicked it on again, training it ahead and crossing his arms like a barely believable F.B.I agent on a bad TV show.

A giant of a man rushed into House's triangle of light. He stopped when he saw the gun and placed his hands on his hips. He spat on the floor and leaned forward, trying to catch his breath.

"I suggest you go back the way you just came," House said.

Al grinned at him.

"He a friend of yours?" Al asked Cameron. When he didn't get a response he shrugged and spat on the floor again before straightening up to his full height. "You pissed because I gave you that little scratch? You stole from me then attacked me!" He chuckled and then looked at House again. "She's feisty, I'd watch her."

"Back off," House said, trying to keep calm as he cocked the hammer on his gun. He was so tired. He wasn't in the mood for this kind of shit. Al took one step forward and House shot a hole in the tree next to his head. Bits of bark and broken wood exploded into Al's face. It didn't cause much of a reaction. He seemed surprised by House's accuracy rather than the actual shot. House's aim had improved greatly since the last time he'd been in this situation. He wondered if this was how it would be now, every time they met another human male, because, he wasn't a hero. He wasn't brave. Sooner or later they'd meet someone like this guy but House wouldn't have a gun.

"I'll put the next one in the middle of your skull." House warned. "So turn around, and disappear."

The man didn't do anything but watch them for a moment before smiling as he contemplated his next move.

"Yeah, it's getting late; I should probably be heading back now. But I'll be seeing you two again. You can count on that."

Al winked at Cameron and then turned from them. House didn't lower the torch or the gun for a long time.

_ _ _

Al had 'happened' about an hour ago. House had been bitching and moaning for about a half-hour. Cameron hadn't said anything since she'd slammed into him in the woods.

Everything was perfectly dysfunctional.

"- the only thing that we have going for us, is that there's two of us!" House said. "So when we encounter new people, say, semi-moronic yokels with a thirst for rape and murder, the odds that we'll leave their acquaintance alive are much higher!"

The pain that usually lingered in House's thigh had found a tributary. Now pain coursed freely around his leg. Some of it had even found its way down into his foot, and up into his stomach. Each step hurt immensely. Was he desperately relieved Cameron was okay? Yes. But he wasn't giving her any of that. She'd screwed up and he was hurting because of it, so he bitched to keep himself distracted, to keep the adrenalin pumping and to keep them moving forwards. And because she sort of deserved it.

Wilson had been travelling silently with them for about fifteen minutes, leaving no footprints in the snow and showing no signs of feeling the cold. Eventually he tried to call House off. House figured the real Wilson would have known better.

"You're such an asshole. You know she's hurt. Give her a lecture when she's not on the verge of passing out."

Cameron was cradling her arm like a sick baby. When they'd been sure the guy had gone, House had retrieved a thin rope from the tent and used it as a tourniquet. He'd attended the wound badly, the best he could do in the middle of a forest in the dark. They needed to get home soon so he could deal with it properly. He'd offered her a Vicodin but she had refused it, probably worried that it would cause her to become lethargic. The pain and the adrenalin was all she had to go on – all either of them had to go on. Secretly, he respected her for that.

He wanted to make it back to the house without having to put up the tent. He didn't like the idea of staying outside in the cold tonight with the added danger of a maniac on the loose.

"What were you thinking?" House continued, glaring at the Wilson hallucination. Cameron continued silently, walking at House's side and keeping to his snail's pace.

"He's going back to town to get his gun," Wilson said. "When he's there, he'll find her gun too. When he's armed himself, he's going to come looking for you."

House stopped walking and grabbed Cameron's good arm, spinning her around. "You lost the Walther?"

"Yes, that's the reaction I was looking for when I shared that information with you," Wilson sighed.

Cameron's blank expression, the one she'd been wearing since their altercation with the madman had ended, turned into one of guilt and surprise.

"How did you know that?"

How did he know that?

"Why else would you run? You could have shot the jackass yourself if you'd still had the Walther."

"Nice cover," Wilson offered. "I don't know why you don't just tell her you can see me. She can see Chase."

This surprised House for a moment, before he dismissed it as crap.

"Don't believe me? Tell her you need to pee and keep an eye on what happens next."

House needed to pee anyway. Cameron made a move to continue and he pulled her back again, although gentler this time.

"No wait, I need to pee." House dropped back to one of the snow drifts beside the road and unzipped his fly. Cameron turned away from him.

_ _ _

Chase had appeared about a mile back. He'd kept silent and she'd done her best to ignore him. Pain could make the human brain do all kinds of things. A dead lover wasn't all that original. But when House left to relieve himself, she felt the urge to say something anyway.

"'He's got a knife'!" Cameron went to fold her arms, but a sharp pain shot along her arm, reminding her of the injury. She winced and dropped it to her side, glowering at Chase instead.

"He _did_ have a knife." Chase folded his arms, as if to mock her. He had a slight grin on his face too. If he'd have been real she would have punched him in the jaw.

"And you couldn't have given me that warning a little bit earlier?"

"It would have ruined the effect."

"You're such an asshole."

"And you're all about the drama. Relax; I knew what you were going to do before you did. I also knew that House was coming."

"You knew about this, too?" She said, holding her injured arm up for him to see.

"I didn't think he'd get you. Sorry about that."

"You wanted to punish me," she muttered.

"A little, perhaps, I mean, could you have jumped into bed with House any _quicker_ after I'd met my painful end?"

Cameron turned away from him, only to be met by the sight of House peeing, so she turned to face Chase again.

"You're even more annoying now you're a creation of my stressed brain."

"I'm not a hallucination," Chase said.

"I _know_ you're a hallucination."

"I told him convincing two atheists there was an afterlife was going to be tricky."

"What?"

"Wilson. I told him." Chase said, and then he nodded at House. "He's done."

Cameron glanced at House as he returned. When she turned to face Chase he was gone again.

That was beginning to annoy her.

_ _ _

House zipped up and studied Cameron as she had a whispered conversation with the air beside her.

"I told you," Wilson said, typically smug.

"So what? So she's starving, and stressed and in pain too. That proves nothing."

"After everything that's happened, why is it so hard to believe I'm really here?"

"Because I buried you in a garden outside Cuddy's office!" House snapped. "All that's left of you is in _my_ head." House glanced at Cameron. "And all that's left of Chase is in hers."

"You don't know everything, House."

Oh, he knew enough, and he was done. He wasn't doing this to himself anymore. He wasn't interacting with _it_ anymore. However good it felt to see Wilson again, it would only serve to hurt him more in time. House stooped to retrieve his pack from the ground and hefted it back onto his tired shoulders. By the time he was set to continue, his talking conscience had vanished.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: Not mine

I see monsters

Chapter twelve

House and Cameron made it back to the farmhouse just before 9 p.m. It felt much later to Cameron. It felt as though she'd been walking for days. House had been trying to put some sort of elaborate plan together as they'd neared home, muttering something about them walking around the plot so they could come at the house from a different angle, and hadn't she ever seen The Shining? But by the time the house came into view he just wanted to get inside and get warm and Cameron was in full agreement. Once inside Cameron sat down on the sofa while House gathered what he needed to tend to her arm. He'd had the medical kit with him and had managed to put on a clean dressing, but he'd done nothing more. He carefully removed the tourniquet and together they got her out of her jacket. House cut away the sleeve of her sweater and then handed Cameron two pills.

"Take them, now. You know this is going to hurt so stop trying to punish yourself because your plan backfired."

Cameron took the pills from him and swallowed them down with a gulp of Cola. She'd found a tin in her pocket from the store. She tried to hand the rest to House but he wouldn't take it.

"You need the sugar more than I do."

He disappeared outside for a moment. She could feel the wind stealing inside. It was only a moment but it felt like a lifetime. What if Al had been following them? What if he jumped House now? Her heart raced until House was safely inside again with the door locked behind him. He'd gone to collect some snow, which he melted down on their little camping stove. When it had turned to water he soaked a clean bandage in it. He then tipped some of the boiling water into a clean mug and then tipped some salt he'd found in the kitchen into that.

House's movements were stiff and slow. His stomach had been growling hungrily for hours. Cameron felt awful - for making him walk through the snow and for failing. She'd been so close. They would have had enough to see them through until the snow had cleared. Then they'd have been able to take the truck and move on. Now they'd probably need to go on foot before the snow had melted. And after the trek they'd just endured, she doubted House's leg would be able to take it.

House stuck the little torch in his mouth and had a good look at the wound. He lifted her arm carefully to see if the knife had gone all the way through. It hadn't. He handed her the torch.

"Too deep to suture, safer to leave it open. You're going to have to hold that for me."

She shone the light on her arm and they waited for the salt water to cool. When it had, House retrieved some disposable gloves from the medical kit and rubbed some scotch between his palms and over each hand, sterilising them the best he could. He then took hold of Cameron's arm and tipped his homemade saline right into the wound.

Cameron tensed and jerked her arm back a little.

"Keep still," House complained.

She closed her eyes and muttered a few quick expletives under her breath. The torch in her good hand faltered, and House lost his light. Water spilled over the sides of her arm and onto the wood floor. He dodged back a little to avoid getting wet, trying not to drop her arm in the process. House sighed and then slipped the light from her hand and jammed it back into his mouth. "Bon't be a baby iffs ot dat bad," House mumbled around the torch.

"Your bedside manner is a constant marvel," Cameron muttered.

House dried the wound with a wad of clean bandage and then, still holding Cameron's arm, rooted through their medical supplies with his free hand until he felt the small tube of Neosporin that he knew was in there. Cameron had picked it up back at the teaching hospital and they'd had it ever since. That had been a good call.

He smeared it carefully into and around the wound and then secured a light dressing around it.

"I told you we'd need more than Vicodin," she said when he was done. But she was glad they had some of that too. Her arm felt numb now.

- - -

With Cameron's arm bandaged, House did his best to secure the main doors to the farmhouse. He nailed planks over the front and then did the same with the back door. He wedged a chair under the handle of the door that lead to the basement.

"Are you going to start listening to me now?" he called out to Cameron.

"I'm sorry." She called back.

"I'll bet you are," he said to himself, two nails sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he made the front door a little more secure.

They'd taken to using the downstairs spare room as their bedroom. Cameron was in bed trying to get warm. He was exhausted, cold and hungry, but sleep, heat and food were a distant hope for him. Someone had to take the first nightshift and keep watch. He'd have made Cameron do it but she was as high as a kite now, and would probably just fall asleep. She needed to sleep some of her buzz off first.

"Where the hell did that guy come from, anyway?" House called out to her. The door would hold for now. He'd have to take the planks off and come up with a better plan in the morning.

"I never saw him in town," she mumbled, her words slurring and dipping out of his range. "He just came out of nowhere. I'd collected all this food. I had to hit him with it; such a waste."

House tuned out and finished his job. She was making little sense now.

When he was done nailing up boards, he went into the bedroom and pulled on an extra sweater. He removed his boots and jeans and stood shivering in his underwear as he changed into some dry clothing. Once he'd done that he shoved the small leather sofa up to the corner window and turned it so he could sit and watch the woodland and the road in relative comfort. He placed his loaded rifle against the wall by the window and sat down. Cameron came over to him with two blankets wrapped around her. He stole one of the blankets and she curled up beside him on the sofa, placing her head in his lap.

He wondered where all his anger had gone? He'd been so mad at her before, but now, as he looked down at her, stoned and sleepy, he realised she'd been right to do what she'd done. Someone had needed to do something.

"Thank you for coming after me," Cameron mumbled.

"I'm not doing it again. Next time you're on your own."

"There won't be a next time. I promise."

For a long time there was nothing but silence, wind, and the barely audible sound of Cameron's breathing. Occasionally the farmhouse would cough up a creak or a bump, but nothing House hadn't heard every night since they'd been there. Nothing that suggested they might have an intruder with an axe and a vendetta. At around 2a.m, Cameron sat up on the sofa, yawning and pulling her blanket around her shoulders.

"I can't sleep."

"Try the bed then," House said, still scanning the woodland that took over where the wasted farmland ended.

"I can't sleep because I can't stop thinking, not because I'm uncomfortable."

"You want more drugs?" House said. "They'll cost you. I'm into my emergency, emergency stash now."

"No, House." She shifted back a little and settled on the other side of the sofa. House regarded her. "I know you can see Wilson."

House glanced back out at the road. He'd been thinking about this too. He shrugged. "I know you can see Chase. Don't tell me you're a 'Believer' now?"

"No. It's just, in the forest today when I saw him, it was right before Al appeared and Chase warned me; he told me something I couldn't have known."

"What?"

"He told me that Al had a knife, and he did. That's a very specific detail. How could I have known that?"

"Something you saw in town tipped you off." House dismissed her and then turned back to the window, twitching the curtains and scanning the endless white for any sign of life. "Wait, how did you know his name was Al?" He frowned.

"He introduced himself before he tried to stab me. Courteous, I know. There was nothing in town to tip me off about the knife. I collected some food, and then I went to the book store and the clinic – that's it."

House looked at her expectantly. "You got drugs?"

"I did," she said sheepishly, "but I lost them along with everything else."

He rolled his eyes and went back to his surveillance. "You must have sensed something when you got to Gorham? Felt like someone was watching you while you were there? Or a noise?"

"No, I -" she thought about it for a second, "-well, there was a moment, yes. I got a very fleeting sense of something. But anyone would have felt like that alone in a ghost town. I didn't see anything specific."

"There's a gun store. You didn't go in there, notice something was missing?"

"No."

House thought about it for a moment. "But you went into the grocery store?"

"Yes, but they don't sell knives at the store. Not the kind Al had."

House smiled. He had it. "No, but when we went there months ago, there was a stack of camping gear behind the counter, do you remember?"

Cameron thought back. So much had happened since then. She hadn't exactly burned the moment they gathered tins at the store into her memory. She shook her head. "Not really?"

"You do. You just don't remember you do clearly enough, which is exactly why you remembered it today, in the form of Chase doing a Patrick Swayze impression." House frowned. "Does that make me Whoopi Goldberg?"

"No, it makes you the evil guy who gets killed by a window at the end. Anyway, confusing digression much?"

House pulled a false 'worried' face. "Is the fake Chase in your brain mad at you for having sex with me?"

Cameron rolled her eyes and House grinned but returned his attention to overseeing the security of their rickety stronghold.

"Think about it. There was a hunting knife on the top of that camping gear. I remember it. I remember thinking the folks who'd owned the store had been planning to leave before the virus had hit, but it had obviously got them anyway. I also remember I chose not to take it because we have a better one. You saw it too, or at least you glanced at it, but it wasn't until you noticed that the knife was gone on a subconscious level _today_ that it meant anything to you."

"Dr. House, Mr. Armstrong would like his stretch back," Cameron said.

"Of course it's a stretch! It's exactly that." House got up. She shuffled over on the sofa and peered out of the window he'd been guarding for the last few hours. House began to pace the room.

"That's what these hallucinations - or whatever they are - do. They're like a product of our instincts, or something." He grinned at her.

"Or products of grief," she said. "Which is much more likely, Al has been seeing things too. He mentioned something about me being the only 'real' person he'd seen in months. He lost his family to the virus and he's been on his own for months. Grief is all he's got."

House paced back across the room, his hand carefully kneading the knot of tension in his thigh.

"No, he has the same thing we have - the virus. It's got to be. We can't all be having the same grief experience. Is it so hard to believe that something that wiped out humanity in a few weeks didn't change something in the people it left behind?"

"We didn't catch the virus. Where am I supposed to be looking?"

"The road and the line of woodland to the north; if he's coming, he'll surface there; it's too cold for him to go around the whole property."

House stopped pacing for a moment and pointed at something only he could see. "And we did catch the virus, Cameron. We must have, we just didn't become symptomatic. It doesn't mean we didn't get it. I had a natural resistance. You took something that managed to fight it off. Our bodies fought off the virus at different rates, which would explain why you're only just seeing things now, and I've been seeing them for months."

"I don't see how that would affect a shared symptom?"

"Artillery; my resistance was old school, natural. It wasn't as complex as yours. My body fought World War One, all trenches and mud, but you had World War Two and some cool new shit, spitfires and M10 Wolverines."

Hearing House chatter in metaphors and riddles was something she'd missed. She'd longed for this energy and excitement to return. House on this level was creative and useful.

"You mean you took more damage?"

"No, I took _different_ damage," he frowned. "Have you completely lost the ability to work out a simple metaphor?"

"Forgive me, after spending the day fraught, cold, injured and terrified it takes me a little longer to decipher 'House' speak."

"I'll forgive you this once."

"You're just happy because this means you're not crazy."

He shrugged. "Is that a bad thing?"

She shook her head. "No, it's not."

"The interesting question is, if _we_ see loved ones and people we miss, what or who does Al see?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not particularly, but I think it's interesting."

"You would, but it's not interesting it's typical. He sees what he's always seen, he's a psychopath."

"But he knows what he has seen _isn't_ real. A psychopath wouldn't know the difference. Ergo, he's not a psychopath."

House smiled.

"Why is that a good thing?"

"It's not, it's merely interesting. But if we do meet him again, we might be able to reason with him. You can't reason with a psychopath."

"Get some sleep. Textbook crazy or a whole new kind of crazy, it doesn't matter to me. Al isn't right in the head."

"No he's not. So don't fall asleep."

House sat down beside her and got comfy on the sofa, taking his turn to use her lap as a pillow. It was warmer here than in bed on his own.

"Do you want to get naked and make a clay pot? I definitely have some Richeous Brothers on my iPod."

"Enough with the Ghost references," Cameron said. "Sleep, or be shot, your choice."

House fell asleep with ease. He was content; he had a puzzle.


End file.
